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DONATED  BY 
^.  KATHERINE  TINGLEY 


HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 


Aryan  Theosophical  Press 
Point  Loma,  California 


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younger    days. 


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From  ;i  pliolo^raph  taken  al)i)ul   ihf  lime  of  llir  loiinatioii 

of  the  Theosoijhical  Society  in   New   York  in   1875,   and 

the  writing  of  His  Unveiled. 


HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

FOUNDRESS  OF  THE  ORIGINAL  THEOSOPHICAL  SOCIETY 
IN  NEW  YORK.  1875, 

THE  International  Headquarters  of  which  are  now  at 
Point  Loma,  California 


BY  KATHERINE  TINGLEY 


Published   by   The   Woman's   International   Theosophical   League, 

International  Theosophical  Headquarters, 

Point  Loma,  California 


Copyright  1921  by  Katherine  Tingley 


CONTENTS 

Helena    Petrovna    Blavatsky                              Katherine    Tingley  1 

"Yours  Till  Death  and  After,  H.  P.  B."              William  Q.  Judge  9 

Helena  Petrovna  Blavatsky                                    William  Q.  Judge  11 

Helena  Petrovna  Blavatsky 

An  Editorial  published  in  the  New  York  Tribune,  May  10,  1891  13 

Helena  Petrovna  Blavatsky 

A  Refutation  of  Slanders  against  the  Foundress 

of  the  Theosophical  Society                           Iverson  L.  Harris  15 

Incidents  in  the  Life-History  of  Helena  Petrovna  Blavatsky  22 

H.  P.  Blavatsky,  the  Hero                                       H.  Travers,  M.  A.  28 

Tributes  to  Helena  Petrovna  Blavatsky 

By  some  of  her  old  pupils  resident  at  the  International  Theo-  32 
sophical  Headquarters,  Point  Loma,  California 

By  some  of  her  students  and  others  at  the  International  Theo-  37 
sophical  Headquarters,  Point  Loma,  California 

By  some  of  her  students  43 

Quotations  from  the  writings  of  Helena  Petrovna  Blavatsky 

From  I  sis  Unveiled,  published  in  1877  52 

From  The  Secret  Doctrine,  published  in  1888  58 

From  The  Key  to  Theosophy,  published  in  1889  66 

From  "The  New  Cycle"  68 

From  "The  Tidal  Wave"  74 

From  The  Voice  of  the  Silence  77 

From  "Is  Theosophy  a  Religion?"  78 

Miscellaneous  79 


^iC4l52 


Theosophy  leads  to  .  .  .  action  —  enforced  action,  instead 
of  mere  intention  and  talk.  .  .  .  But  no  Theosophist  has 
the  right  to  this  name  unless  he  is  thoroughly  imbued  with 
the  correctness  of  Carlyle's  truism,  "The  end  of  man  is  an 
action  and  not  a  thought,  though  it  were  the  noblest,"  and 
unless  he  sets  and  models  his  daily  life  upon  this  truth. 
The  profession  of  a  truth  is  not  yet  the  enactment  of  it; 
and  the  more  beautiful  and  grand  it  sounds,  the  more  loudly 
virtue  or  duty  is  talked  about  instead  of  being  acted  upon, 
the  more  forcibly  it  will  always  remind  one  of  the  Dead  Sea 
fruit.     Cant  is  the  most  loathsome  of  all  vices. 

—  The  Key  to  Theosophy,  p.  226. 

A  true  Theosophist  must  put  in  practice  the  loftiest  moral 
ideal;  must  strive  to  realize  his  unity  with  the  whole  of 
humanity,  and  work  ceaselessly  for  others. 

—  The  Key  to  Theosophy,  p.  26. 


HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY* 

By  Katherine  Tingley 

TJELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY,  the  Foundress  oj  the  present 
A.  J.  Theosophkal  Movement,  is  called  the  'lion-hearted '  ly  her  followers, 
and  I  can  conceive  of  no  better  name  for  her,  because  in  every  act  of 
her  lije  there  was  a  superb  courage  —  a  courage  of  a  quality  which  we  rarely 
hear  of  except  when,  under  peculiar  circumstances,  a  man  is  aroused  to  his 
highest  motive  and  most  superb  effort  by  some  stirring  emergency.  I  mean 
spiritual  courage,  of  a  quality  which  marJis  one  who  has  realized  that  he  is 
essentially  divine,  which  endows  him  with  a  measure  of  knowledge  that  can 
come  to  him  only  through  his  inner  nature,  which  at  that  moment  maizes  him 
conscious  that  he  is  something  more  than  he  seems,  part  of  the  universal  scheme 
of  life,  and  in  harmony  with  the  wonderful  forces  of  nature.  In  spite  of  his 
having  made  mistakes,  in  spite  of  having  faltered,  of  having  done  injustice 
to  others,  once  he  realizes  that  he,  and  every  man,  inherits  the  power  to  be  his  own 
savior  and  can  mal^e  his  life  an  expression  of  divine  law,  —  that  very  fact  will 
bring  to  him  a  superb  courage  such  as  Madame  Slav atsl^y  possessed  in  so  mar\ed 
a  degree  and  which  she  carried  through  her  whole  life. 


As  Foundress  of  the  original  Theosophical  Society  she  brought  again  to 
the  world  the  teachings  of  Theosophy,  the  principles  of  which  are  as  old  as  the 
ages,  but  which,  although  so  old  —  having  been  lost  sight  of  for  so  many  years — 
appeared  as  new,  as  something  very  optimistic,  something  very  inspiring,  for 
all  the  world's  children  to  receive. 


The  great  purpose  of  the  Theosophical  Society,  as  originated  by  Madame 
Blavatsl^,  is  to  teach  Brotherhood.  She  brought  from  the  storehouse  of  the  past 
the  great  teachings  of  the  Wisdom- Religion,  Theosophy,  and  they  have  been 
preserved  by  those  members  who  stood  faithfully  by  her  and  her  successors,  and 

*From  stenographic  report  of  an  address  given  in  Isis  Theater,  San  Diego,  California. 


HELENA  FETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 


who  have  sustained  the  original  Theosophical  Society,  which  is  now  called  the 
Universal  Brotherhood  and  Theosophical  Society. 


She  J^new  her  mission  for  Humanity.  Nothing  could  throw  her  aside, 
no  one  could  discourage  her  —  the  more  she  was  persecuted,  the  more  she  Worthed, 
and  the  same  is  true  of  William  Q.  Judge,  her  successor  —  with  the  result  that 
this  Society  is  today  established  on  a  basis  of  honor  and  dignity  and  integrity 
that  is  unassailable,  with  its  World-Center  and  International  Headquarters 
at  Point  Loma,  California. 

* 

At  the  time  she  came  to  the  Western  World  a  great  wave  of  materialism  was 
sweeping  over  this  country  and  over  all  Europe.  It  was  a  marl^ed  time.  The 
minds  of  men  were  turning  away  from  the  possibility  of  the  higher  spiritual 
thought;  they  had  become  weary  of  creeds  and  dogmas;  they  had  found  so  much 
professed  in  the  name  of  religion  and  so  little  practised  in  daily  life  that  in 
their  despair  they  had  fallen  bacl^  upon  the  power  of  mere  reason  as  an  anchorage, 
ignoring  and  in  many  instances  attaching  and  seeding  to  tear  down  and  to 
deny  the  divine  principles  of  life  and  nature. 


Under  the  divine  urge  of  her  soul,  Madame  Blavats^y  came  to  this  country  un- 
heralded, a  perfect  stranger.  She  selected  America  as  the  first  field  of  her  endeavor, 
because  she  was  so  imbued  with  the  idea  of  the  liberty  that  was  accorded  in  this  great 
country  to  every  Helper  of  Humanity.  She  was  a  Russian  and  had  suffered  under 
the  pressure  of  the  conditions  in  her  country.  From  childhood  she  had  seen  injustice 
practised  upon  the  peasants  and  others  in  the  name  of  the  law.  She  had  ob- 
served the  appalling  contrasts  between  the  enormous  wealth  of  the  churches  and 
the  poverty  and  suffering  under  the  shadow  of  their  very  walls.  She  realized  the 
insincerity  and  the  unbrotherliness  of  the  age,  its  materialism  and  the  resulting 
disregard  of  everything  which  could  not  be  expressed  in  terms  of  matter.  And  so 
great  were  her  sympathies  for  the  human  race  that  she  selected  America,  this 
'Land  of  Liberty,'  to  establish  a  firm  foundation  for  the  teachings  of  Brotherhood, 
so  that  from  America  should  go  out  the  l^nowledge  and  the  practice  of  Brotherhood 
to  all  lands  and  all  peoples  —  even  to  her  own  land. 


She  was  well  aware  then,  as  many  are  today,  that  any  effort  to  reform  Russia 
from  within  would  only  meet  with  failure;  help  must  be  given  from  without.    It 


HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY  3 

is  no  speculation  on  the  pari  of  her  students  to  declare  that  she  had  foresight  in 
regard  to  the  conditions  in  the  world,  that  she  knew  not  only  the  needs  of  the  time, 
hut  the  remedy  for  those  needs.  How  are  we  to  account  for  the  fact  that  she  had 
more  foresight  than  others?  Why  should  we  select  her  as  an  example  and  pro- 
claim her  to  the  world  as  one  of  its  greatest  teachers?  One  of  the  best  answers 
to  these  questions,  one  that  I  have  found  in  my  study  of  her  life,  is  this:  if  a 
man  or  woman  can  keep  warm  the  Heart  Doctrine  in  his  or  her  life,  and  can  feel 
it  a  sacred  duty  to  be  constantly  cultivating  the  spirit  of  tolerance,  the  power  of 
sympathy  will  so  grow  in  the  nature  and  in  the  mind  that  the  higher  faculties  of  the 
immortal  man,  the  soul,  will  come  into  action  more  positively  and  effectively. 
The  higher  part  of  ones  nature  is  constantly  alive  in  its  way,  although  we  may 
not  have  the  outer  expression,  and  although  the  brain-mind  may  be  wording 
against  it,  because  of  environment  and  conditions  and  Karmic  seeds  that  have  been 
sown  —  yet  it  is  always  there.  It  was  the  positive,  conscious  quality  that  was  so 
needed  to  touch  the  minds  of  men  —  and  that  quality  gave  Madame  Blavats^y 
the  foresight  and  courage  to  persevere  in  her  work  fot  Humanity. 


Her  sympathy  grew  with  the  days  of  her  childhood.  It  was  aroused  by  the 
injustice  and  the  insincerity  that  she  saw  in  the  life  around  her;  and  even  as  a 
young  woman,  when  not  more  than  sixteen  years  of  age,  there  was  in  her  mind 
and  heart  and  life  a  superb  purpose.  She  could  not  have  had  so  great  a  purpose 
had  there  not  been  some  incentive,  not  only  from  the  outward  things  which  I  have 
mentioned,  which  she  saw  in  her  own  country,  but  an  incentive  of  such  quality 
and  foresight  that  in  her  heart  she  realized  that  all  countries  needed  help  according 
to  their  evolution  and  condition.  It  was  this  that  carried  her  through  all  the 
wonderful  experiences  in  her  travels  in  many  lands  until,  in  the  seventies  of 
last  century,  she  brought  to  America  this  wonderful  philosophy  of  life  —  Theo- 
sophy  —  and  established  the  Theosophical  Society  as  a  nucleus  of  men  and 
Women  who  would  work  for    Universal  Brotherhood. 


There  must  indeed  have  been  some  unusual  conditions  that  caused  this  great 
woman  to  leave  her  home  in  Russia,  where  she  had  position  and  wealth  and 
everything  that  the  modern  world  holds  dear,  and  was  already  one  of  the  promising 
lights  in  literature  and  an  accomplished  musician.  She  had  no  selfish  motive, 
as  one  can  see,  for  there  Was  no  money  nor  fame  to  be  gained  through  her  efforts. 
She  had  the  foresight  to  understand  humanity  and  to  k^ow  that  when  she  took  "P 
her  cross,  when  she  began  her  search  for  an  answer  to  the  problems  of  life,  when 


4  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

later  as  a  stranger  she  came  to  this  great  country  and  dared  to  speaJ^  openly 
the  sublime  truths  of  the  Ancient  Wisdom,  Theosophy,  she  would  meet  the  im- 
perfections of  human  nature  and  have  to  suffer  her  share  of  persecution  as  all 
other  true  reformers  had  suffered  in  the  past  —  possibly  not  in  the  same  way, 
but  that  she  must  suffer,  she  l^new. 


With  the  picture  and  history  before  her  of  the  persecution  that  all  true  reformers 
had  endured,  she  must  hace  had  a  quality  of  courage  far  above  the  ordinary  — 
/  call  it  extraordinary.  It  was  courage  born  of  the  superb  sympathy  in  her  heart; 
and  with  courage  came  new  strength,  and  she  waltzed  as  one  clothed  in  the 
Light.  She  challenged  religious  systems,  admitting  that  the  essential  teachings  of 
religion  were  there,  but  that  they  were  so  honeycombed,  so  shut  in,  that  all  humanity 
was  going  awry  because  it  had  not  the  Light,  it  could  not  find  the  Path.  Many 
great  minds  here  and  there  in  this  and  other  countries  were  reaching  out,  seel^ing 
to  lead  the  world  on  material  lines,  away  from  even  those  indefinite  lights  of  the 
different  religious  systems,  carrying  men  away  from  their  moorings,  so  to  speal^, 
out  into  a  darl^ness  which  would  have  become  appalling  if  it  had  continued. 


Madame  Blavatskjy  challenged  the  minds  of  the  time.  One  has  only  to  read  her 
boo\s;  you  need  not  tal^e  my  word  for  it,  but  fust  read  her  wonderful  booths,  and 
you  will  see  that  through  her  sympathy  and  courage  and  her  l^nowledge  of  human 
nature,  there  must  have  come  into  her  life  a  quality  of  erudition,  and  a  power  to 
apply  the  remedy  to  the  ills  from  which  humanity  was  suffering.  But  what  did  she 
meet  with  when  she  came  to  this  lovely  country  of  ours?  It  maizes  one  almost 
forget  that  there  was  ever  given  us  a  suggestion  of  Liberty.  Instead  of  welcoming 
her  as  one  who  would  lift  the  veil  and  shed  a  light  upon  the  ancient  teachings  which 
the  churches  had  so  imperfectly  presented,  which  had  inspired  the  life  of  Christ 
and  of  all  the  other  great  Teachers,  nearly  every  religious  body  criticized  her,  tore 
her  life  to  pieces,  so  to  say,  fust  so  far  as  they  could  reach  the  public  through  their 
control  of  articles  in  the  newspapers  and  in  the  publication  of  sensational  books. 
That  was  the  royal  welcome  that  America  gave  to  H.  P.  Blavats^y,  the  Friend 
of  Humanity. 


I  should  not  dwell  upon  this  now,  if  it  were  not  that  somehow,  fust  this  hour, 
at  this  time  when  we  as  a  people  are  called  upon  to  work  ^^'■^  ^^^  hu.nianity  to  bring 
about  Permanent  Peace,  fust  now  when  there  are  such  menacing  conditions  in  the 


HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 


World,  and  there  is  unrest  and  despair  and  discouragement  among  so  many, — 
now  is  the  time  when  Madame  Blavatsky  should  step  forth  again  in  all  the  glory 
and  inspiration  of  her  unselfish  life  with  the  Divine  Message  of  Brotherhood 
which  she  brought  to  the  world! 


We  have  no  time  to  tarry  along  the  way;  we  have  no  time  for  argument;  we 
need  to  get  down  to  basic  facts;  we  must  study  cause  and  effect.  We  must  realize 
why  we  are  now  in  this  state  of  such  unrest;  why,  as  a  people,  we  arc  divided; 
why  there  is  one  class  seething  help  on  certain  lines,  perhaps  too  forcefully,  de- 
claring they  are  oppressed  and  losing  their  rights,  while  there  is  another  class  in 
our  country  today  sitting  in  the  quietude  and  so-called  peace  of  their  wealth  and 
prosperity,  indifferent  to  the  heart-cry  of  humanity.  And  in  presenting  this 
contrast  it  does  not  mean  that  I  as  a  Theosophist,  or  that  any  Theosophist,  in  any 
sense,  can  support  anything  that  is  not  absolutely  in  accord  with  the  principles  of 
Theosophy,  that  is,  which  is  not  absolutely  in  accord  with  Brotherhood  and  Justice. 


Surely,  now  is  the  very  time  when,  if  Madame  Blavats^  could  be  heard  and 
her  message  could  reach  the  whole  world,  she  would  accentuate  the  idea  of  tolerance 
— love  for  one  another.  It  is  a  time  when  we  cannot  afford  to  waste  effort  in 
criticizing  each  other.  We  have  our  weal^nesses  individually  and  nationally; 
hut  we  have  so  many  things  to  do,  and  so  much  to  learn,  that  we  cannot  afford 
to  waste  a  moment  in  tearing  down  anything  which  has  a  vital  sparli  of  goodness 
in  it.  If  we  oppose  our  brothers  unfairly  and  unjustly  we  shall  reap  as  we  have 
sown,  and  this  is  what  we  have  done  all  down  the  ages  and  right  into  these  modern 
times.  We  have  with  us  today  marl^ed  evidences  of  the  mistakes  of  the  past,  made 
by  our  ancestors,  the  product  of  many  of  the  old  teachings  —  the  harvest  of  the 
wrong  seeds  that  have  been  sown.  Foremost  of  all  has  been  the  spirit  of  unbrother- 
liness,  which  today  is,  and  for  ages  past  has  been,  the  Insanity  of  the  Age.  It  is 
appalling!  And  yet  how  many,  with  their  families  and  the  bread-and-butter 
question  to  meet,  ta\e  time  to  consider  these  conditions,  even  the  conditions  right 
in  their  own  cities?  How  many  realize  that  crime  is  increasing,  and  that  the 
spirit  of  injustice  is  growing  even  in  the  name  of  religion?  There  are  so  many 
problems  of  life  that  are  not  understood.  But  one  thing  which  all  can  do  and 
which  is  so  much  needed,  is  to  throw  our  whole  heart  and  soul  on  to  that  line  of 
action  which  PAadame  Blavatsky  so  clearly  indicated  —  to  create  a  New  Spirit 
of  Brotherhood,  to  cultivate  a  Sympathy  superbly  great,  and  to  add  to  the  Courage 
of  the  Soul  —  not  the  courage  of  the  world,  nor  the  courage  of  the  mind,  nor  that 


HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 


courage  which  sometimes  comes  with  just  a  little  quality  of  selfsercing  —  none 
of  these;  but  the  Courage  that  dares,  with  a  royal  quality  of  daring,  to  do  the 
things  that  are  right  for  Right's  sake,  for  Humanity  s  sal^e. 


If  we  would  do  these  things,  how  long,  thinly  you,  would  it  tal^e  to  build  up  our 
nation  in  such  a  way  that  a  new  Light  would  be  ours?  And  then  would  come  forth 
in  all  its  beauty  and  dignity  that  splendid  divine  Sympathy  which  is  in  the  heart 
of  every  man,  and  the  despair  and  unrest  of  the  age  would  die  out  under  the 
pressure  of  our  Spiritual  Will,  our  Brotherly  Thoughts  and  Acts,  and  the  great 
optimistic  Hope  which  I  have  spoken  of  —  the  Hope  that  is  inspired  by  the 
teachings  of  Theosophy.  Under  present  conditions  we  need  something  a  little 
more  inspiring  than  the  general  trend  of  affairs.  Our  best  writers  write  well, 
our  best  preachers  preach  well,  our  best  statesmen  do  well  —  all  within  the  limits 
of  things  as  they  are  —  but  they  could  do  better;  so  could  we,  each  one  of  us; 
and  so  could  everyone  in  the  world.  It  is  the  united  effort  of  all  that  is  needed — 
of  everyone  as  a  unit  in  the  whole — to  call  out  the  power  of  the  Inner  Divine  Self, 
to  find  the  strength  of  his  character  and  the  glory  of  the  Real  Life,  each  one  clearing 
his  mind  of  all  its  rubbish,  its  prejudices,  and  the  pressures  that  come  to  lead 
him  astray,  each  one  walking  straight  and  clean  —  lil^e  little  children  at  the 
feet  of  the  Great  Law,  so  to  speal^. 


I  could  not  seek  lo  present  to  you  the  beautiful  thoughts  which  Madame 
Blavatsky  taught,  which  are  the  same  thoughts  which  the  Nazarene  and  all  the 
great  Teachers  have  presented  down  the  ages,  but  are  now  given  in  Theosophy 
in  such  a  way  that  the  mind  of  the  inquirer  finds  the  foundation,  the  basis, — ■ 
/  could  not  present  these  to  you,  except  to  urge  the  necessity  of  putting  them  into 
practice  in  daily  life;  for  to  preach  and  not  to  try  to  lead  the  life  were  hypocrisy. 
And  we  have  our  share  of  it  in  this  great  country  of  ours.  We  may  preach  eter- 
nally, we  may  dream,  we  may  aspire  eternally.  We  may  think.  ^^  have  the  will  to 
do  right,  but  unless  we  are  positively  unselfish  and  courageous  in  our  efforts 
for  good  work,  we  do  little.  How  can  we  face  the  present  condition  of  affairs, 
the  menacing  conditions  so  near  to  us,  without  feeling  that  somewhere  along  the 
Path  we  have  failed  to  do  our  duty  to  each  other?  We  must  know  that  the  condi- 
tions that  are  growing  all  over  the  world,  conditions  of  violence  and  antagonism, 
were  not  born  in  an  hour,  nor  in  a  day,  nor  in  a  year  nor  a  century.  Their 
seeds  were  sown  ages  ago.  But  if  the  great  spiritual  truths  which  were  given  to 
man  in  the  very  dawn  of  his  history  had  been  kept  in  all  their  simplicity,  and 


HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY  7 

creeds  and  dogmas  had  had  no  existence,  there  would  not  have  been  this  great 
separation  in  the  human  family  which  is  everywhere  becoming  more  and  more 
manifest. 

To  find  the  best  way  to  set  the  Great  Wheel  of  Brotherhood  in  motion  —  that 
is  what  we  must  do.  There  are  many  very  interesting  people,  very  intellectual, 
very  energetic  —  we  all  kpow  such  —  who  would  say;  "Well,  you  \now,  one 
cant  do  much.  The  ideas  that  you  present  are  very  beautiful  and  I  admire 
them  and  believe  in  them,  but  one  cant  do  much!''  I  know  better,  and  I  \now  that 
Madame  BlavaisI^,  that  one  woman,  who  faced  the  conditions  that  she  did, 
coming  here  among  strangers,  leaving  her  home  and  its  protection,  bringing  her 
message  of  Theosophy  to  the  world, —  that  she  alone  was  a  colossal  power,  even 
at  that  time,  and  in  spite  of  persecution  and  opposition.  And  today  her  message 
has  increased  a  hundred-fold  in  its  strength  and  possibilities  and  is  permeating 
every  department  of  thought.  Sometimes  you  will  hear  of  great  preachers  and 
speakers,  particularly  in  the  Eastern  states,  putting  aside  their  dogmas  and 
creeds  —  putting  them  aside  when  expressing  their  own  thought,  I  mean,  for 
they  are  still  hemmed  in  by  their  theology  —  but  at  the  grand  finale  almost  al- 
ways obliterating  what  they  have  said  out  of  the  depths  of  their  hearts.  Just  for  a 
moment  at  such  times  the  speaker  is  himself,  he  is  not  trying  to  mal^e  an  impression 
on  the  public,  his  soul  has  arisen  for  a  moment  into  the  Light,  and  he  utters  the 
teachings  of  Theosophy. 

* 

You  will  find  Theosophical  ideas  in  romance  and  in  poetry,  and  all  along 
the  line,  but  usually  only  half-expressed  and  half-heartedly.  There  are  so  few 
who  come  out  openly  as  Victor  Hugo  did  in  recognition  of  the  truth  of  Reincarna- 
tion as  absolutely  essential  to  an  understanding  of  human  life.  Not  many  do 
this,  but  if  you  wish  to  know  more  about  this  subject  of  Reincarnation,  which  is 
one  of  the  great  keys  to  the  solution  of  the  problems  of  life,  all  you  have  to  do  is  to 
study  the  Poets.  Sit  down  for  a  few  hours  with  Walt  Whitman  and  say  if  it  is 
possible  that  he  did  not  have  a  glimpse  of  the  higher  ideas  of  life,  if  he  did  not 
immortalize  himself  in  giving  Voice  to  the  principles  of  Reincarnation.  Take 
Whittier  and  the  other  poets,  and  you  will  find  glimpses  of  the  same  truth  as 
they  had  the  courage  and  the  daring  to  express  it.  The  American  mind  is  too 
much  inclined  to  blend  a  few  truths  with  fallacies  and  absurdities  and  idiosyn- 
cracies,  and  with  popular  thought  and  *  New  Thought.'  Mens  minds  are  so 
laden,  their  mental  luggage  is  so  heavy,  that  the  Light  of  Truth  can  but  rarely 
find  entrance. 


8  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

Turning  again  to  Madame  Blacaiskys  teachings,  we  find  the  k^y  that  will 
open  the  door  to  the  inner  and  higher  nature  of  man.  Holding  this  k.ey,  man 
challenges  himself;  he  must  enter  the  chambers  of  his  soul,  he  must  talk,  ^^^h 
himself;  he  must  unroll  the  Screen  of  Time  before  himself,  and  see  all  his  past, 
and  question  as  to  how  far  he  has  failed  in  his  duty  to  his  fellows.  Then, 
with  this  picture  and  memory  before  him,  if  the  heart  is  right,  if  aspiration 
is  there,  the  soul  will  come  into  action  and  close  the  door  on  the  past;  and  he  will 
hold  the  lesson  in  his  mind  and  go  forth  in  new  light,  in  new  power,  with  a  quality 
of  sympathy  and  courage  and  an  affectionate  tolerance  which  all  the  world 
should  have.  If  only  we  could  be  tolerant  towards  our  enemies  —  but  that  does  not 
mean  that  we  must  support  them  in  their  errors  or  their  weal^nesses  or  their 
unjust  acts  —  it  means  that  We  shall  be  so  just  in  all  that  We  do  in  protest,  and 
in  all  that  we  do  in  lifting  the  veil  on  what  is  Wrong,  that  We  shall  do  no  harm, 
but  we  shall  show  something  of  the  spirit  of  tolerance  and  goodwill  even  in  our 
protest.  For  the  spirit  of  criticism,  of  vengeance,  of  unbr other liness,  intolerance 
and  force,  is  a  hydra-headed  monster  —  a  monster  that  preys  upon  humanity, 
ever  seeding  its  destruction. 


So  in  presenting  to  you  dear  Madame  Blavatsky,  our  great  Teacher,  it  is  my 
hope  to  arouse  in  you  such  interest  that  you  will  seeli  to  know  more  about 
her  and  her  teachings.  Oh!  how  I  wish  you  could  come  really  to  know  her!  You 
would  then  begin  to  realize  what  her  message  was,  you  Would  see  how  the  condi- 
tions of  her  life  led  up  to  her  helping  Humanity;  and  then,  no  matter  how  your 
minds  may  have  been  permeated  with  dogmas  and  creeds  and  intolerance  in  the 
past,  you  would  find  that  som.ething  new  had  been  awakened  in  your  heart  and 
life.  It  is  there  in  the  recesses  of  your  being,  and  if  you  desire  to  be  just,  to  do 
right,  to  live  the  life  and  turn  this  menacing  tide  of  unbrotherliness,  you  will 
seek  the  Way,  find  the  Light,  and  reach  the  Goal,  through  self-directed  effort  — 
self-directed  evolution — for  ''the  Way  to  Final  Freedom  is  within  Thyself." 


DONATED  BY 


''YOURS  TILL  DEATH  AND  AFTER,  H.  P.  B."* 

BY  William  Q.  Judge 

SUCH  has  been  the  manner  in  which  our  beloved  teacher  and  friend 
ahvays  concluded  her  letters  to  me.  And  now,  though  we  are 
all  of  us  committing  to  paper  some  account  of  that  departed  friend 
and  teacher,  I  feel  ever  near  and  ever  potent  the  magic  of  that  resistless 
Hfe,  as  of  a  mighty  rushing  river,  which  those  who  wholly  trusted  her 
always  came  to  understand.  Fortunate  indeed  is  that  Karma  which, 
for  all  the  years  since  I  first  met  her,  in  1875,  has  kept  me  faithful  to 
the  friend  who,  appearing  under  the  outer  mortal  garment  known  as 
H.  P.  Blavatsky,  was  ever  faithful  to  me,  ever  kind,  ever  the  teacher 
and  the  guide. 

In  1874,  in  the  city  of  New  York,  I  first  met  H.  P.  B.  in  this  life. 
By  her  request,  the  call  was  made  in  her  rooms  in  Irving  Place,  when 
then,  as  afterwards,  through  the  remainder  of  her  stormy  career,  she 
was  surrounded  by  the  anxious,  the  intellectual,  the  bohemian,  the  rich 
and  the  poor.  It  was  her  eyes  that  attracted  me,  the  eye  of  one  whom 
I  must  have  known  in  lives  long  passed  away.  She  looked  at  me  in 
recognition  at  that  first  hour,  and  never  since  has  that  look  changed. 
Not  as  a  questioner  of  philosophies  did  I  come  before  her,  not  as  one 
groping  in  the  dark  for  lights  that  schools  and  fanciful  theories  had  ob- 
scured, but  as  one  who,  wandering  many  periods  through  the  corridors 
of  life,  was  seeking  the  friends  who  could  show  where  the  designs  for  the 
work  had  been  hidden.  And  true  to  the  call  she  responded,  revealing  the 
plans  once  again,  and  speaking  no  words  to  explain,  simply  pointed  them 
out  and  went  on  with  the  task.  If  was  as  if  but  the  evening  before  we 
had  parted,  leaving  yet  to  be  done  some  detail  of  a  task  taken  up  with 
one  common  end;  it  was  teacher  and  pupil,  elder  brother  and  younger, 
both  bent  on  the  one  single  end,  but  she  with  the  power  and  the  knowledge 
that  belong  but  to  lions  and  sages.  So,  friends  from  the  first,  I  felt  safe. 
Others  I  know  have  looked  with  suspicion  on  an  appearance  they  could 
not  fathom,  and  though  it  is  true  they  adduce  many  proofs  which,  hugged 
to  the  breast,  would  damn  sages  and  gods,  yet  it  is  only  through  blindness 
they  failed  to  see  the  lion's  glance,  the  diamond  heart  of  H.  P.  B. 

In  1888  she  wrote  to  me  privately: 

"Well,  my  only  friend,  you  ought  to  know  better.  Look  into  my  life  and  try  to  realize  it  — 
in  its  outer  course  at  least,  as  the  rest  is  hidden.    I  am  under  the  curse  of  ever  writing,  as  the 

*Originally  published  in  Lucifer,  (London)  1891 


10  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

wandering  Jew  was  under  that  of  being  ever  on  the  move,  never  stopping  one  moment  to  rest. 
Three  ordinary  healthy  persons  could  hardly  do  what  I  have  to  do.  I  live  an  artificial  life; 
I  am  an  automaton  running  full  steam  until  the  power  of  generating  steam  stops,  and  then  — 
good-bye!  .  .  .  Night  before  last  I  was  shown  a  bird's-eye  view  of  the  Theosophical  Societies. 
I  saw  a  few  earnest  reliable  Theosophists  in  a  death  struggle  with  the  world  in  general,  with 
other  —  nominal  but  ambitious  —  Theosophists.  The  former  are  greater  in  numbers  than  you 
may  think,  and  they  prevailed,  as  you  in  America  tvill  prevail,  if  you  only  remain  stanch  to  the 
Teacher's  program  and  tnie  to  yourselves.  .  .  ." 

Such  she  ever  was;  devoted  to  Theosophy  and  the  Society  organized 
to  carry  out  a  program  embracing  the  world  in  its  scope.  Willing  in  the 
service  of  the  cause  to  offer  up  hope,  money,  reputation,  life  itself,  pro- 
vided the  Society  might  be  saved  from  every  hurt,  whether  small  or  great. 
And  thus  bound  body,  heart,  and  soul  to  this  entity  called  the  Theo- 
sophical Society,  bound  to  protect  it  at  all  hazards,  in  face  of  every  loss, 
she  often  incurred  the  resentment  of  many  who  became  her  friends  but 
would  not  always  care  for  the  infant  organization  as  she  had  sworn  to  do. 

Once,  in  London,  I  asked  her  what  was  the  chance  of  drawing  the 
people  into  the  Society  in  view  of  the  enormous  disproportion  between 
the  number  of  members  and  the  millions  of  Europe  and  America  who 
neither  knew  of  nor  cared  for  it.  Leaning  back  in  her  chair,  in  which 
she  was  sitting  before  her  writing-desk,  she  said: 

"When  you  consider  and  remember  those  days  in  1875  and  after,  in  which  you  could  not 
find  any  people  interested  in  your  thoughts,  and  now  look  at  the  wide-spreading  influence  of 
Theosophical  ideas  —  it  is  not  so  bad.  We  are  not  working  merely  that  people  may  call  them- 
selves Theosophists,  but  that  the  doctrines  we  cherish  may  affect  and  leaven  the  whole  mind 
of  this  century.  This  alone  can  be  accomplished  by  a  small  earnest  band  of  workers,  who  work 
for  no  human  reward,  no  earthly  recognition,  but  who,  supported  and  sustained  by  a  belief 
in  that  Universal  Brotherhood  of  which  our  Teachers  are  a  part,  work  steadily,  faithfully,  in 
understanding  and  putting  forth  for  consideration  the  doctrines  of  life  and  duty  that  have 
come  down  to  us  from  immemorial  time.  Falter  not  so  long  as  a  few  devoted  ones  will  work 
to  keep  the  nucleus  existing.  You  were  not  directed  to  found  and  realize  a  Universal  Brother- 
hood, but  to  form  the  nucleus  for  one;  for  it  is  only  when  the  nucleus  is  formed  that  the  accu- 
mulations can  begin  that  will  end  in  future  years,  however  far,  in  the  formation  of  that  body 
which  we  have  in  view." 

H.  P.  B.  had  a  lion  heart,  and  on  the  work  traced  out  for  her  she  had 
the  lion's  grasp;  let  us,  her  friends,  companions  and  disciples,  sustain 
ourselves  in  carrying  out  the  designs  laid  down  on  the  trestle-board,  by  the 
memory  of  her  devotion  and  the  consciousness  that  behind  her  task  there 
stood,  and  still  remain,  those  Elder  Brothers  who,  above  the  clatter  and 
the  din  of  our  battle,  ever  see  the  end  and  direct  the  forces  distributed 
in  array  for  the  salvation  of  "that  great  orphan  —  Humanity." 


HELENA     PETROVNA     BLAVATSKY* 
BY  William  Q.  Judge 

THAT  which  men  call  death  is  but  a  change  of  location  for  the 
Ego,  a  mere  transformation,  a  forsaking  for  a  time  of  the  mortal 
frame,  a  short  period  of  rest  before  one  reassumes  another  human 
frame  in  the  world  of  mortals.  The  Lord  of  this  body  is  nameless; 
dwelling  in  numerous  tenements  of  clay,  it  appears  to  come  and  go; 
but  neither  death  nor  time  can  claim  it,  for  it  is  deathless,  unchangeable, 
and  pure,  beyond  Time  itself,  and  not  to  be  measured.  So  our  old  friend 
and  fellow-worker  has  merely  passed  for  a  short  time  out  of  sight,  but 
has  not  given  up  the  work  begun  so  many  ages  ago  —  the  upUfting  of 
humanity,  the  destruction  of  the  shackles  that  enslave  the  human  mind. 
I  met  Mme.  Blavatsky  in  1874  in  the  city  of  New  York  where  she 
was  living  in  Irving  Place.  There  she  suggested  the  formation  of  the 
Theosophical  Society,  lending  to  its  beginning  the  power  of  her  individuali- 
ty and  giving  to  its  President  and  those  who  have  stood  by  it  ever  since 
the  knowledge  of  the  Theosophical  teachings.  In  1877  she  wrote 
Isis  Unveiled  in  my  presence,  and  helped  in  the  proof-reading  by  the 
President  of  the  Society.  This  book  she  declared  to  me  then  was  intended 
to  aid  the  cause  for  the  advancement  of  which  the  Theosophical  Society 
was  founded.  Of  this  I  speak  with  knowledge,  for  I  was  present  and  at 
her  request  drew  up  the  contract  for  its  publication  between  her  and  her 
New  York  publisher.  When  that  document  was  signed  she  said  to  me, 
"Now  I  must  go  to  India." 


In  November,  1878,  she  went  to  India  and  continued  the  work  of 
helping  her  colleagues  to  spread  the  Society's  influence  there,  working 
in  that  mysterious  land  until  she  returned  to  London  in  1887.  There 
was  then  in  London  but  one  Branch  of  the  Society  —  the  London  Lodge  — 
the  leaders  of  which  thought  it  should  work  only  with  the  upper  and 
cultured  classes.  The  effect  of  Mme.  Blavatsky's  coming  there  was  that 
Branches  began  to  spring  up,  so  that  now  they  are  in  many  English 
towns,  in  Scotland,  and  in  Ireland.  There  she  founded  her  magazine 
Lucifer,  there  worked  night  and  day  for  the  Society  loved  by  the  core 
of  her  heart,  there  wrote  The  Secret  Doctrine,  The  Key  to  Theosophy, 

♦From  an  article  published  in   The  Path   (New  York),   189L 


12  HELENA   PETROVNA   BLAVATSKY 

and  The  Voice  of  the  Silence,  and  there  passed  away  from  a  body  that 
had  been  worn  out  by  unselfish  work  for  the  good  of  the  few  of  our  cen- 
tury but  of  the  many  in  the  centuries  to  come. 

That  she  always  knew  what  would  be  done  by  the  world  in  the  way 
of  slander  and  abuse  I  also  know,  for  in  1875  she  told  me  that  she  was 
then  embarking  on  a  work  that  would  draw  upon  her  unmerited  slander, 
implacable  malice,  uninterrupted  misunderstanding,  constant  work,  and 
no  worldly  reward.  Yet  in  the  face  of  this  her  lion  heart  carried  her  on. 
Nor  was  she  unaware  of  the  future  of  the  Society.  In  1876  she  told  me 
in  detail  the  course  of  the  Society's  growth  for  future  years,  of  its  infancy, 
of  its  struggles,  of  its  rise  into  the  "luminous  zone"  of  the  public  mind, 
and  these  prophecies  are  being  all  fulfilled. 

Her  aim  was  to  elevate  the  race.  Her  method  was  to  deal  with  the 
mind  of  the  century  as  she  found  it,  by  trying  to  lead  it  on  step  by  step; 
to  seek  out  and  educate  a  few  who,  appreciating  the  majesty  of  the  Secret 
Science  and  devoted  to  "the  great  orphan  Humanity,"  could  carry  on 
her  work  with  zeal  and  wisdom;  to  found  a  Society  whose  efforts  — 
however  small  itself  might  be  —  would  inject  into  the  thought  of  the  day 
the  ideas,  the  doctrines,  the  nomenclature  of  the  Wisdom-Religion,  so 
that  when  the  next  century  shall  have  seen  its  75th  year  the  new  mes- 
senger coming  again  into  the  world  would  find  the  Society  still  at  work, 
the  ideas  sown  broadcast,  the  nomenclature  ready  to  give  expression  and 
body  to  the  immutable  truth,  and  thus  to  make  easy  the  task  which  for  her 
since  1875  was  so  difficult  and  so  encompassed  with  obstacles  in  the  very 
paucity  of  the  language, —  obstacles  harder  than  all  else  to  work  against. 


No  one  can  study  ancient  philosophies  seriously  without  perceiving  that 
the  striking  similitude  of  conception  between  all  —  in  their  exoteric  form 
very  often,  in  their  hidden  spirit  invariably  —  is  the  result  of  no  mere  co- 
incidence, but  of  a  concurrent  design:  and  that  there  was,  during  the  youth 
of  mankind,  one  language,  one  knowledge,  one  universal  religion,  when  there 
were  no  churches,  no  creeds  or  sects,  but  when  every  man  was  a  priest  unto 
himself.  And,  if  it  is  shown  that  already  in  those  ages  which  are  shut  out 
from  our  sight  by  the  exuberant  growth  of  tradition,  human  religious  thought 
developed  in  uniform  sympathy  in  every  portion  of  the  globe;  then,  it  be- 
comes evident  that  born  under  whatever  latitude,  in  the  cold  North  or  the 
burning  South,  in  the  East  or  West,  that  thought  was  inspired  by  the  same 
revelations,  and  man  was  nurtured  under  the  protecting  shadow  of  the  same 
TREE  OF  KNOWLEDGE. —  H.  P.  Blavatsky:   The  Secret  Doctrine,  Vol.  I,  p.  341. 


DONATED  BY 
KATHERINE  TINGLEY 


HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY* 

FEW  women  in  our  time  have  been  more  persistently  misrepresented, 
slandered,  and  defamed,  than  Madame  Blavatsky,  but  though  malice 
and  ignorance  did  their  worst  upon  her,  there  are  abundant  indica- 
tions that  her  life-work  will  vindicate  itself,  that  it  will  endure,  and  that  it 
will  operate  for  good.  She  was  the  founder  of  the  Theosophical  Society,  an 
organization  now  fully  and  firmly  estabhshed,  which  has  branches  in  many 
countries,  East  and  West,  and  which  is  devoted  to  studies  and  practices  the 
innocence  and  the  elevating  character  of  which  are  becoming  more  general- 
ly recognised  continually.  The  life  of  Madame  Blavatsky  was  a  remark- 
able one,  but  this  is  not  the  place  or  time  to  speak  of  its  vicissitudes.  It 
must  suffice  to  say  that  for  nearly  twenty  years  she  had  devoted  herself 
to  the  dissemination  of  doctrines  the  fundamental  principles  of  which 
are  of  the  loftiest  ethical  character.  However  Utopian  may  appear  to 
some  minds  an  attempt  in  the  nineteenth  century  to  break  down  the 
barriers  of  race,  nationahty,  caste,  and  class  prejudice,  and  to  inculcate 
that  spirit  of  brotherly  love  which  the  greatest  of  all  Teachers  enjoined 
in  the  first  century,  the  nobiUty  of  the  aim  can  only  be  impeached  by 
those  who  repudiate  Christianity.  Madame  Blavatsky  held  that  the 
regeneration  of  mankind  must  be  based  upon  the  development  of  altru- 
ism. In  this  she  was  at  one  with  the  greatest  thinkers,  not  alone  of  the 
present  day,  but  of  all  time;  and  at  one,  it  is  becoming  more  and  more 
apparent,  with  the  strongest  spiritual  tendencies  of  the  age.  This  alone 
would  entitle  her  teachings  to  the  candid  and  serious  consideration  of 
all  who  respect  the  influences  that  make  for  righteousness. 

In  another  direction,  though  in  close  association  with  the  cult  of 
universal  fraternity,  she  did  an  important  work.  No  one  in  the  present 
generation,  it  may  be  said,  has  done  more  toward  re-opening  the  long- 
sealed  treasures  of  Eastern  thought,  wisdom,  and  philosophy.  No  one 
certainly  has  done  so  much  toward  elucidating  that  profound  Wisdom- 
Religion  wrought  out  by  the  ever-cogitating  Orient,  and  bringing  into 
the  light  those  ancient  hterary  works  whose  scope  and  depth  have  so 
astonished  the  Western  world,  brought  up  in  the  insular  behef  that  the 
East  had  produced  only  crudities  and  puerilities  in  the  domain  of  specu- 
lative thought.  Her  own  knowledge  of  Oriental  philosophy  and  eso- 
tericism  was  comprehensive.  No  candid  mind  can  doubt  this  after  reading 
her  two  principal  works.    Her  steps  often  led,  indeed,  where  only  a  few 

*An  Editorial  published  in  the  New  York  Tribune,  May  10,  1891,  (two  days  after 
Madame  Blavatsky's  death.) 


14  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

initiates  could  follow,  but  the  tone  and  tendency  of  all  her  writings  were 
healthful,  bracing,  and  stimulating.  The  lesson  which  was  constantly- 
impressed  by  her  was  assuredly  that  which  the  world  most  needs,  and 
has  always  needed,  namely,  the  necessity  of  subduing  self  and  of  working 
for  others.  Doubtless  such  a  doctrine  is  distasteful  to  the  ego-worshipers, 
and  perhaps  it  has  little  chance  of  anything  like  general  acceptance,  to 
say  nothing  of  general  application.  But  the  man  or  woman  who  deliberate- 
ly renounces  all  personal  aims  and  ambitions  in  order  to  forward  such 
beliefs  is  certainly  entitled  to  respect,  even  from  such  as  feel  least  capable 
of  obeying  the  call  to  a  higher  life. 

The  work  of  Madame  Blavatsky  has  already  borne  fruit,  and  is 
destined,  apparently,  to  produce  still  more  marked  and  salutary  effects 
in  the  future.  Careful  observers  of  the  time  long  since  discerned  that 
the  tone  of  current  thought  in  many  directions  was  being  affected  by  it. 
A  broader  humanity,  a  more  liberal  speculation,  a  disposition  to  investi- 
gate ancient  philosophies  from  a  higher  point  of  view,  have  no  indirect 
association  with  the  teachings  referred  to.  Thus  Madame  Blavatsky 
has  made  her  mark  upon  the  time,  and  thus,  too,  her  works  will  follow 
her.  She  herself  has  finished  the  course,  and  after  a  strenuous  life  she 
rests.  But  her  personal  influence  is  not  necessary  to  the  continuance 
of  the  great  work  to  which  she  put  her  hand.  That  will  go  on  with  the 
impulse  it  has  received,  and  some  day,  if  not  at  once,  the  loftiness  and 
purity  of  her  aims,  the  wisdom  and  scope  of  her  teachings,  will  be  recog- 
nised more  fully,  and  her  memory  will  be  accorded  the  honor  to  which 
it  is  justly  entitled. 


If  Theosophy  prevailing  in  the  struggle,  its  all-embracing  philosophy 
strikes  deep  root  into  the  minds  and  hearts  of  men;  if  its  doctrines  of  Rein- 
carnation and  Karma,  in  other  words,  of  Hope  and  Responsibility,  find  a  home 
in  the  lives  of  the  new  generations,  then,  indeed,  will  dawn  the  day  of  joy 
and  gladness  for  all  who  now  suffer  and  are  outcast.  For  real  Theosophy 
IS  Altruism,  and  we  cannot  repeat  it  too  often.  It  is  brotherly  love,  mutual 
help,  unswerving  devotion  to  Truth.  If  once  men  do  but  realize  that  in 
these  alone  can  true  happiness  be  found,  and  never  in  wealth,  possessions, 
or  any  selfish  gratification,  then  the  dark  clouds  will  roll  away,  and  a  new 
humanity  will  be  born  upon  earth.  Then,  the  Golden  Age  will  be  there, 
indeed. 

But  if  not,  then  the  storm  will  burst,  and  our  boasted  western  civilization 
and  enlightenment  will  sink  in  such  a  sea  of  horror  that  its  parallel  History 
has  never  yet  recorded.— H.  P.  Blavatsky:    Lucifer,  Vol.  IV,  p.  188. 


"'     DONATED  BY 
TKATHERINE  TINGLEV 


HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

A  REFUTATION  OF  SLANDERS 
AGAINST  THE  FOUNDRESS  OF  THE  THEOSOPHICAL 

SOCIETY 

By  Iverson  L.  Harris 

Professor  of  Law,  The  Theosophical  University 

Student  under  Katherine  Tingley,  Leader  and  Official  Head  of  the  Universal  Brotherhood 

and  Theosophical  Society  and  Successor  to  H.  P.  Blavatsky  and  William  Q.  Judge 

Foreword 

THERE  is  absolutely  nothing  new  or  unheard  of  in  the  impulses  direct- 
ing the  several  attacks  that  have,  at  different  times,  been  made 
against  the  character  and  reputation  of  Mme.  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  the 
great  Theosophist  and  Revivifier  of  ancient  Truths  in  our  age.  Such  at- 
tacks always  take  the  form  of  libel  or  slander,  sometimes  arising  out  of  ig- 
norance and  prejudice,  sometimes  springing  forth  from  downright  malice. 
This  melancholy  fact  is  so  well  known  to  historians  that  they  are  constantly 
on  their  guard  against  its  subtle  influence,  and  refuse  to  be  swayed  in  their 
judgments  by  it.  From  the  earliest  epochs  of  recorded  history  or  human 
story,  great  souls,  lion-hearted  reformers  or  innovators,  especially  in  reli- 
gious thought,  and  the  protagonists  in  the  never-ending  struggle  for  human 
betterment  and  human  brotherhood,  invariably  have  had  to  face  and  to 
overcome  trials  of  this  sort.  But  men  and  women  have  blessed  them  for  it, 
for  their  unflinching  courage  and  for  their  immovable  determination  to  win 
through  to  victory  in  the  cause  of  Right  and  Truth.  Think  of  the  great 
figures  which  flash  like  flame-rays  over  our  mental  horizons  from  time  to 
time,  heralds  of  the  Dawn!  Such  were  Jesus  the  "Prince  of  Peace,"  the 
compassionate  Buddha,  the  great  Confucius,  the  brilliant  and  noble- 
minded  Hypatia,  and  a  host  of  others,  filled  with  wisdom  and  with  burning 
love  for  the  human  species  and  for  all  things  that  are. 

And  such  was  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  who  in  her  supreme  effort  to  alleviate 
human  misery  dared  to  speak  the  truth  even  in  the  face  of  unending 
persecution  and  misrepresentation.  Let  it  be  remembered  that  this  new 
outburst  of  ignorance  and  prejudice  against  her  is  but  one  more  of  the 


16  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

cowardly  attacks  upon  a  dead  woman  unable  by  that  fact  to  defend 
herself  with  her  own  mighty  pen,  formerly  dreaded  but  now  still. 


"In  1875  she  told  me  that  she  was  then  embarking  on  a  work  that  would  draw  upon  her 
unmerited  slander,  implacable  malice,  uninterrupted  misunderstanding,  constant  work,  and 
no  worldly  reward.    Yet  in  the  face  of  this  her  lion  heart  carried  her  on." 

—  William   Q.   Judge    (Successor   to   H.   P.    Blavatsky) 

'T^HE  Memoirs  of  Count  Sergius  Witte,  now  being  published,  are 
-*■  attracting  wide  attention.  The  second  installment  of  these  Memoirs 
contains  an  alleged  biographical  sketch  of  Mme.  Helena  Petrovna  Bla- 
vatsky, the  illustrious  founder  of  the  Theosophical  Society.  The  quality 
of  the  remarks  of  the  noted  author  is  in  no  way  superior  to  the  various 
contemptible  attacks  which  from  time  to  time  have  been  made  upon  this 
great  World-Teacher.  But  owing  to  the  fact  that  the  author  bears  the 
title  of  a  nobleman,  and  from  his  kinship  to  Mme.  Blavatsky  apparently 
had  unusual  opportunities  for  gaining  actual  knowledge  concerning  her, 
his  comments  and  statements  are  apt  to  meet  with  an  unquestioning 
credulity.  Particularly  is  this  true  when  we  reahze  the  snobbish  tendency 
of  multitudes  of  readers  to  accept  almost  reverently  anything  that  comes 
from  a  titled  source. 

Those  students  of  Theosophy  who  have  received  the  very  breath  of 
life  from  the  spiritual  teachings  of  this  wonderful  woman  feel  that  it 
would  be  worse  than  dastardly  if  they  allowed  any  attack  upon  her  real 
nobility  to  go  unchallenged. 

This  installment  of  Count  Witte's  Memoirs  bears  internal  evidence 
not  only  of  its  unreliability  but  of  its  unworthiness.  Is  it  not  true  that 
any  wanton  attack  upon  a  woman  ought  to  react  to  the  discredit  of  its 
author?  And  when  we  bear  in  mind  that  the  present  attack  is  not  only 
scurrilous  but  is  made  by  a  kinsman,  then  certainly  his  testimony  is 
already  impeached.  Apart  however  from  this  vice,  Count  Witte's  narra- 
tive and  comment  show  that  they  are  not  even  based  upon  his  own 
alleged  knowledge,  but  upon  tradition  and  hearsay.  He  writes,  "As 
I  was  many  years  her  [Mme.  Blavatsky 's]  junior,  I  could  not  have  any 
recollections  of  Helena  in  her  youth."  "From  the  stories  current  in  our 
family  I  gather,"  etc.  .  .  .     "Such  is  the  family  tradition,"  etc.  .  .  . 

So  that  when  the  Count  proceeds  to  state,  among  a  great  many  other 
alleged  incidents  in  Mme.  Blavatsky's  career,  that  "at  Constantinople 
she  entered  a  circus  as  an  equestrian,"  not  only  is  this  statement  un- 
supported by  the  slightest  offered  evidence  but  according  to  the  testimony 
of  her  sister  Mme.  Jelihovsky,  when  she  reached  Constantinople  she  had 


A   REFUTATION  17 

the  good  fortune  to  meet  here  one  of  her  friends,  the  Countess  K , 


with  whom  she  continued  her  travels  in  Egypt,  Greece,  and  other  parts 
of  eastern  Europe.  According  also  to  her  aunt,  Mile.  Fadeyef,  it  was 
another  Blavatsky  not  in  any  way  connected  with  the  family  who  was 
an  equestrienne  in  Constantinople  (see  her  statement  given  later). 

Another  illustration  of  the  author's  hearsay  testimony  is  where  he 
charges  Mme.  Blavatsky  with  having  married  an  opera  singer,  one 
Mitrovich,  without  having  secured  a  divorce  from  her  husband,  and  again 
with  having  married  "a  certain  Englishman  from  London"  without 
having  obtained  a  divorce  either  from  her  legitimate  or  illegitimate 
husband.  His  authority  for  these  statements  is  that  from  the  second  and 
third  'husbands'  respectively  letters  were  received  by  Mme.  Blavatsky's 
grandfather  to  the  effect  that  they,  in  turn,  had  become  the  old  gentleman's 
'grandsons.'  This  is  hearsay  upon  hearsay,  to  which  no  judicial  tribunal 
on  earth  would  give  the  slightest  credence.  Count  Witte  does  not  state 
that  he  ever  saw  these  letters.  We  are  left  to  presume  that  the  actuality 
of  their  receipt  was  evidenced  only  by  "stories  current  in  the  family," 
and  by  "the  family  tradition."  And  moreover,  if  he  had  seen  such  letters 
he  furnishes  us  no  evidence  of  their  authenticity  or,  granting  that  the 
letters  w^ere  genuine,  that  they  contained  any  proof  of  veracity  further 
than  the  bare  statements  of  the  writers.  Certainly  such  evidence  as  this 
should  not  be  allowed  in  any  way  to  bind  Mme.  Blavatsky  or  her  disciples. 

The  following  very  definitely  defamatory  suggestion  of  Count  Witte 
about  Mme.  Blavatsky  is  also  confessedly  made  upon  hearsay.  Speaking 
of  the  Governor-general  of  Kiev,  Prince  Dundokov-Korsakov,  he  says, 
"The  Prince,  who  at  one  time  served  in  the  Caucasus,  had  known  Helena 
Petrovna  in  her  maiden  days.  /  am  not  in  a  position  to  say  what  was  the 
nature  of  their  relationship.'' 

In  this  instance  not  only  does  Count  Witte's  statement  involve  an 
unpardonable  suggestion  against  Mme.  Blavatsky  that  is  admittedly 
based  upon  hearsay  or  rumor  or  gossip,  but  his  mllingness  to  impugn  by 
such  means  the  character  of  a  member  of  his  family  —  his  own  first 
cousin  —  and  his  ready  disposition  to  injure  her  reputation,  necessarily 
show  to  any  man  with  a  spark  of  chivalry  in  his  nature,  that  there  was  a 
serious  defect  in  the  author's  own  nature.  And  because,  forsooth,  for 
many  years  there  had  been  a  feud  between  the  Blavatsky  family  and  his 
own,  it  ill  becam.e  him  to  vent  his  spleen  upon  his  own  cousin  Helena,  whose 
misfortune  it  was  to  bear  the  name  Blavatsky. 

A  further  proof  of  the  untrustworthy  nature  of  the  author's  Memoirs 
consists  in  the  astonishing  confusion  which  he  has  exhibited  in  his  alleged 
attempt  to  trace  the  career  of  Mme.  Blavatsky  in  the  two  decades  between 
1851  and  1861,  and  between  1861  and  1871;  for  in  the  main  his  account 


18  HELENA  PETROVNA  RLAVATSKY 

of  the  period  between  1861  and  1871  refers  to  occurrences  happening 
between  1851  and  1861,  and,  vice  versa,  the  occurrences  of  the  latter 
decade  are  ascribed  to  the  former. 

Another  instance  of  inaccuracy:  the  Count  states  that  Mme.  Blavatsky 
founded  the  Theosophical  Society  in  England,  whereas  the  facts  are 
that  she  founded  it  in  New  York  City  in  1875,  not  settling  in  England 
until  about  thirteen  years  later.  Again,  he  states  that  after  her  return 
from  India  she  settled  in  Paris,  the  fact  being  that  after  her  return  from 
India  she  settled  in  London.  Again,  he  states  that  Mme.  Blavatsky 
learned  her  "occultism"  from  Mr.  Hume,  a  celebrated  spirituahst.  The 
fact  is  that  the  celebrated  spiritualist  of  that  period  to  whom  the  Count 
refers  was  not  named  'Hume,'  but  was  a  Scotsman,  one  David  D.  Home, 
while  Mr.  Hume  was  a  high  Government  official  resident  at  Simla,  India, 
who  was  one  of  Mme.  Blavatsky's  early  disciples. 

Very  different  is  the  testimony  given  by  Mme.  Blavatsky's  aunt, 
Mile.  N.  A.  Fadeyef,  and  her  sister,  Mme.  Jelihovsky,  who  of  all  her 
relatives  were  most  closely  associated  with  her.  Mile.  Fadeyef  writes 
thus  of  her  illustrious  niece: 

''Faint  rumors  reached  her  friends  of  her  having  been  met  in  Japan,  China,  Constantinople, 
and  the  Far  East.  She  passed  through  Europe  several  times  but  never  lived  in  it.  Her  friends 
therefore  were  as  much  surprised  as  pained  to  read,  years  afterwards,  fragments  from  her 
supposed  biography  which  spoke  of  her  as  a  person  well  known  in  the  high  life,  as  well  as  the  low, 
of  Vienna,  Berlin,  Warsaw,  and  Paris,  and  mixed  her  name  with  events  and  anecdotes  whose 
scene  was  laid  in  these  cities  at  various  epochs,  when  her  friends  had  every  proof  of  her  being 
far  away  from  Europe.  These  anecdotes  referred  to  her  indifferently  under  the  several  Christian 
names  of  Julie,  Nathalie,  etc.,  which  were  really  those  of  other  persons  of  the  same  surname, 
and  attributed  to  her  various  extravagant  adventures.  Thus  the  Nei<e  Freie  Presse  spoke  of 
Madame  Heloise  (?)  Blavatsky,  a  non-existing  personage,  who  had  joined  the  Black  Hussars  — 
les  Hussards  de  la  Mart  —  during  the  Hungarian  revolution,  her  sex  being  found  out  only 
in  1849.  Another  journal  of  Paris  narrated  the  story  of  Mme.  Blavatsky,  'a  Pole  from  the 
Caucasus'  (?),  a  supposed  relative  of  Baron  Hahn  of  Lemberg,  who  after  taking  an  active 
part  in  the  Polish  revolution  of  1863  (during  the  whole  of  which  time  Mme.  Blavatsky  was 
quietly  living  with  her  relatives  at  Tiflis),  was  compelled  from  lack  of  means  to  serve  as  a 
female  waiter  in  a  'restaurant  du  Faubourg  St.-Antoine.'  " 

It  is  certain  that  in  all  her  travels  Mme.  Blavatsky's  father  not  only 
knew  where  she  was,  but  that  in  a  measure  she  was  under  his  protection. 
Her  aunt  writing  about 'this  says: 

"For  the  first  eight  years  she  gave  her  mother's  family  no  sign  of  life  for  fear  of  being 
traced  by  her  legitimate  'lord  and  master.'  Her  father  alone  knew  of  her  whereabouts.  Know- 
ing however  that  he  would  never  prevail  upon  her  to  return  home,  he  acquiesced  in  her  absence 
and  supplied  her  with  money  whenever  she  came  to  places  where  it  could  safely  reach  her." 

Of  similar  import  is  the  following  statement  regarding  Mme.  Blavatsky 
made  by  her  sister  Mme.  Jelihovsky: 

''As  later  in  life,  wherever  she  went,  her  friends  in  those  days  were  many,  but  her  enemies, 
still  more  numerous.  .  .  .  Thus,  while  people  of  the  class  of  the  Princes  Gouriel,  and  of  the 
Princes  Dadiani  and  Abashedse,  were  ranked  among  her  best  friends,  some  others  —  all  those 


A   REFUTATION  19 

who  had  a  family  hatred  for  the  above-named  —  were,  of  course,  her  sworn  enemies.  .  .  . 
Some  years  later,  to  these  were  added  all  the  bifiots,  church-goers,  missionaries,  to  say  nothing  of 
[a  certain  class  of]  American  and  English  spiritualists,  French  spiritists.  .  .  .  Stories  after 
stories  were  invented  of  her,  circulated  and  accepted  by  all,  except  those  who  knew  her  well  — 
as  facts.  Calumny  was  rife,  and  her  enemies  now  hesitate  at  no  falsehood  that  can  injure 
her  character. 

"She  defied  them  all,  and  would  submit  to  no  restraint,  would  stoop  to  adopt  no  worldly 
method  of  propitiating  public  opinion.  She  avoided  society,  showing  her  scorn  of  its  idols, 
and  was  therefore  treated  as  a  dangerous  iconoclast." 

In  view  of  this  testimony  of  Mme.  Blavatsky's  aunt  and  sister,  is  it 
not  more  than  probable,  does  it  not  approach  certainty,  that  Count 
Witte  has  availed  himself  of  the  infamous  stories  which  maliciously  and 
falsely  attribute  to  Mme.  Blavatsky  experiences  which  were  either  ficti- 
tious or  which  centered  about  some  other  Blavatsky  in  no  way  connected 
with  her  or  her  family? 

There  are  only  two  instances  which  the  author  mentions  which  by  his 
own  account  rest  in  his  own  knowledge.  He  says:  "On  one  occasion  she 
[Mme.  Blavatsky]  caused  a  closed  piano  in  an  adjacent  room  to  emit 
sounds,  as  if  invisible  hands  were  playing  upon  it.  This  was  done  in  my 
presence,  at  the  instance  of  one  of  the  guests." 

And  again,  commenting  on  Mme.  Blavatsky's  presence  at  Odessa, 
the  Count  refers  to  her  having  for  a  short  time  made  and  sold  artificial 
flowers,  and  in  this  connexion  he  says:  "In  those  days  she  often  came  to 
see  my  mother,  and  I  visited  her  store  several  times,  so  that  I  had  the 
opportunity  of  getting  better  acquainted  with  her."  It  should  be  observed, 
parenthetically,  that  if  the  Count's  cousin,  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  was  on 
terms  of  such  friendliness  with  his  mother,  a  decent  respect  for  his  mother 
should  have  prevented  him  from  insulting  her  guest  and  niece. 

Though  the  Count  recites  this  last  incident  in  a  form  that  seems  in- 
tended to  disparage  Mme.  Blavatsky,  yet  even  if  it  is  true,  no  right- 
thinking  person  ought  to  allow  himself  to  condemn  Mme.  Blavatsky  if, 
from  the  stress  of  circumstances  or  for  any  other  legitimate  reason,  she 
found  herself  engaged  in  a  rather  commonplace  employment.  And  if  the 
piano  story  is  true,  not  only  is  this  phenomenon  extraordinary  but  it 
shows  a  somewhat  aesthetic  and  poetical  characteristic  that  her  marvels 
should  take  such  musical  form.  The  piano  incident  illustrates  not  any 
evocation  of  'spirits'  by  Mme.  Blavatsky,  but  an  effort  to  exempHfy  the 
latent  powers  in  man  and  the  finer  forces  of  nature.  The  scant  information 
that  we  have  about  Jesus  indicates  that  he  was  a  carpenter  and  may  have 
been  a  fisherman,  and  that  Buddha  followed  the  avocation  of  a  beggar, 
although  the  son  of  royal  parents.  Is  the  making  and  selling  of  artificial 
flowers  less  honorable? 

The  author  does  state  something  further  on  his  own  knowledge,  though 
strictly  speaking  it  is  a  conclusion  or  opinion  of  the  witness.    He  says: 


20  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

"I  was  especially  impressed  by  the  extraordinary  facility  with  which  she 
acquired  skill  and  knowledge  of  the  most  varied  description.  Her  abilities 
in  this  respect  verged  on  the  uncanny."  The  choice  of  the  word  *  uncanny ' 
in  this  connexion  shows  the  author's  instinctive  prejudice.  Otherwise  he 
would  have  said  'miraculous.' 

The  author  goes  on  to  say:  "A  self-taught  musician,  she  was  able  to 
give  pianoforte  concerts  in  London  and  Paris,  and  although  entirely 
ignorant  of  the  theory  of  music,  she  conducted  a  large  orchestra.  Consider 
also  that  although  she  never  seriously  studied  any  foreign  languages,  she 
spoke  several  of  them  with  perfect  ease.  I  was  also  struck  by  her  mastery 
of  the  technique  of  verse.  She  could  write  pages  of  smoothly  flowing  verse 
without  the  slightest  effort,  and  she  could  compose  essays  in  prose  on  every 
conceivable  subject.  Besides,  she  possessed  the  gift  of  hypnotizing  both 
her  hearer  and  herself  into  believing  the  wildest  inventions  of  her  fantasy." 

In  the  last  sentence  the  instinctive  prejudice  of  the  author  is  again 
revealed.  He  himself  says  in  another  place:  "Although  a  young  boy, 
my  attitude  toward  these  performances  was  decidedly  critical,  and  I 
looked  on  them  as  mere  sleight-of-hand  tricks." 

If  as  a  mere  boy  the  author  had  not  presumed  to  be  "  decidedly  critical " 
in  the  presence  of  transcendent  genius,  and  if  he  had  not  presumed  to 
adjudge  his  august  kinswoman  to  be  a  sleight-of-hand  performer,  then 
he  might  have  discovered  that  neither  she  herself  nor  her  hearers  were 
"hypnotized"  into  believing  any  invention  or  any  fantasy,  but  that  her 
hearers  were  momentarily  translated  by  the  magic  of  her  divine  con- 
sciousness so  that  they  could  in  some  degree  participate  in  its  beauties 
and  wonders. 

The  author  further  says:  "She  has  enormous  azure-colored  eyes,  and 
when  she  spoke  with  animation,  they  sparkled  in  a  fashion  which  is  al- 
together indescribable.  Never  in  my  life  have  I  seen  anything  like  that 
pair  of  eyes."  Again  he  says:  "The  Moscow  editor,  Katkov,  famous  in 
the  annals  of  Russian  journalism,  spoke  to  me  in  the  highest  terms  of 
praise  about  her  literary  gifts,  as  evidenced  in  the  tales  entitled  From  the 
Jungles  of  Hindustan,  which  she  contributed  to  his  magazine." 

The  closing  paragraph  of  the  second  instalment  of  Count  Witte's 
Memoirs  reads:  "Let  him  who  still  doubts  the  non-material  origin  and 
the  independent  existence  of  the  soul  in  man  consider  the  personality  of 
Mme.  Blavatsky.  During  her  earthly  existence,  she  housed  a  spirit  which 
was,  no  doubt,  independent  of  physical  or  physiological  being.  As  to  the 
particular  realm  of  the  invisible  world  from  which  that  spirit  emerged, 
there  may  be  some  doubt  whether  it  was  inferno,  purgatory,  or  paradise. 
I  cannot  help  feeling  that  there  was  something  demoniac  in  that  extra- 
ordinary woman." 


—     DONATED  BY 
KATHERINE  TINGLEY 


A   REFUTATION  21 


Except  for  the  ugly  traits  already  pointed  out  in  the  Count's  nature, 
he  could  never  have  reached  such  a  conclusion.  Perhaps  he  was  aided  in 
arriving  at  this  doubting  opinion  by  the  hereditary  bent  received  from  his 
religious  ancestry  and  from  his  theological  affiliations,  particularly  with 
a  high  ecclesiastical  dignitary.  But  the  question  has  arisen  in  the  minds 
of  many:  Did  Count  Witte  himself  really  write  these  defamatory  state- 
ments against  his  cousin,  Helena  P.  Blavatsky,  or  have  they  been  inter- 
polated in  his  Memoirs  by  another? 

Socrates  must  drink  the  hemlock  because  his  conventional  judges, 
looking  through  the  eyes  of  their  egotism  and  their  sacerdotal  prejudices, 
determined  that  this  Grecian  Savior  was  "corrupting  the  youth  of  Athens." 
Hypatia,  who  is  now  recognised  as  having  been  one  of  the  most  exalted 
Spiritual  Teachers  since  the  days  of  the  Nazarene,  was  seized  by  a  mob  of 
Christian  monks,  murdered,  and  her  flesh  scraped  from  her  bones,  because 
these  Christians  decided  that  her  chaste  wisdom  sprang  from  demoniacal 
regions.  Jesus  was  condemned  by  the  Pharisees  because,  forsooth,  he 
was  a  "wine-bibber"  and  consorted  with  "publicans  and  sinners,"  and 
also  it  was  said  of  him,  "He  hath  a  devil." 

Count  Witte  seems  never  to  have  heard  of  his  kinswoman's  immortal 
works.  The  Key  to  Theosophy,  The  Voice  of  the  Silence,  Isis  Unveiled, 
and  The  Secret  Doctrine.  If  he  had  known  of  them,  and  if  he  could  have 
read  them  without  being  "decidedly  critical,"  then,  despite  the  unmanly 
traits  which  he  has  displayed,  despite  his  presumptuous  egotism,  despite 
his  instinctive  theological  predilections,  he  might  have  been  forced  into 
paying  his  illustrious  relative  an  unqualified  tribute.  In  one  of  these 
immortal  works  Mme.  Blavatsky  writes: 

"There  is  a  road,  steep  and  thorny  and  beset  with  perils  of  every  kind,  but  yet  a  road, 
and  it  leads  to  the  heart  of  the  Universe.  I  can  tell  you  how  to  find  Those  who  will  show  you 
the  secret  gateway  that  leads  inward  only,  and  closes  fast  behind  the  neophyte  forevermore. 
There  is  no  danger  that  dauntless  courage  cannot  conquer;  there  is  no  trial  that  spotless  purity 
cannot  pass  through;  there  is  no  difficulty  that  strong  intellect  cannot  surmount.  For  those 
who  win  onward,  there  is  reward  beyond  all  telling:  the  power  to  bless  and  serve  humanity. 
For  those  who  fail,  there  are  other  lives  in  which  success  may  come." 

If  Count  Witte  had  been  able  to  invoke  that  nobility  of  spirit  which 
would  have  enabled  him  to  read  this  language  profitably,  he  could  not  have 
asked  whether  its  source  was  "inferno,  purgatory,  or  paradise."  He  could 
not  have  felt  "that  there  was  something  demoniac  in  this  extraordinary 
woman."  He  would  have  known  that  such  hmpid  streams  of  spiritual 
waters  flowed  through  Paradise  and  had  their  fountain-springs  in  the 
Eternal  Realms  beyond. 

International  Theosophical  Headquarters, 
Point  Loma,  California,  December  16,  1920. 


INCIDENTS    IN    THE    LIFE-HISTORY    OF 
HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY* 

HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY,  daughter  of  Colonel  Peter 
Hahn,  was  the  granddaughter  of  General  Alexis  Hahn  (a  noble 
family  of  Mecklenburg  settled  in  Russia).  On  the  mother's  side 
she  was  the  daughter  of  Helene  Fadeyef,  and  the  granddaughter  of 
Privy  Councillor  Andrew  Fadeyef  and  of  the  Princess  Helene  Dolgoruki. 
Born  at  Ekaterinoslaff  in  South  Russia  between  July  30  and  31  in  1831, 
she  was  married  in  1848  to  the  Councillor  of  State,  Nicephore  Blavatsky, 
late  Vice-Governor  of  the  province  of  Erivan,  Caucasus. 

1830-1840  —  Her  mother,  Helene  Fadeyef,  was  an  authoress  —  the 
first  novel  writer  that  had  ever  appeared  in  Russia  —  under  the  no7n  de 
plume  of  Zenaida  R . 

1830-1832  —  Time  of  the  great  plague.  During  the  baptismal  rite 
of  Helena,  a  child  holding  a  candle  set  fire  to  the  long  robes  of  the  offici- 
ating priest,  and  besides  the  priest  several  persons  were  severely  burnt. 
Helena  was  a  great  pet  of  her  grandparents  and  aunts,  and  from  earliest 
years  was  brought  up  in  an  atmosphere  of  legends  and  popular  fancy. 

1833-1834  —  Because  of  the  date  of  her  birth  she  was  called  by  the 
serfs  the  Sedmichka,  meaning  one  connected  with  the  number  seven. 
She  was  carried  round  the  house  every  July  30th  by  her  nurse,  through 
the  stables  and  cow-pen,  and  was  made  personally  to  sprinkle  the  four 
corners  with  water,  the  nurse  repeating  all  the  while  some  mystic  senten- 
ces, to  purify  the  places  from  the  rusalka  (undine)  and  other  evil  spirits 
(domovoys)  from  whom  it  was  believed  she  was  free. 

1835  —  About  this  time  she  had  an  English  governess.  Miss  Augusta 
Sophia  Jeffries,  but  this  lady  did  not  seem  to  have  the  capacity  for 
managing  her  charge. 

1837  —  About  this  time  she  and  her  younger  sister  Vera  —  after- 
wards married  to  an  officer  in  the  Guards  at  St.  Petersburg,  named 
de  Yahontoff,  and  later  the  widow  of  a  civil  officer  named  de 
Jelihovsky,  who  formerly  belonged  to  the  government  at  Tiflis  —  were 
sent  to  live  with  their  father  and  for  two  or  three  years  were  chiefly 
taken  care  of  by  their  father's  orderlies,  petted  on  all  sides  as  les  enjants 
du  regiment. 

1842  —  After  the  death  of  her  mother,  Helena  was  taken  to  live  at 


♦Extracts  from  various  sources,  reprinted  from  The  New  Century,  Vol.  V,  No.  4,  Dec.  8, 1901. 


INCIDENTS   IN   THE   LIFE  OF   H.   P.   BLAVATSKY  23 

Saratoff  by  her  grandmother,  her  grandfather  being  civil  governor  there, 
as  he  was  formerly  at  Astrakhan.  She  was  difficult  to  manage  on  any 
uniform  system.  Though  excitable  and  passionate  she  had  "no  malice 
in  her  nature,  no  lasting  resentment  even  against  those  who  have  wronged 
her,  and  her  true  kindness  of  heart  bears  no  permanent  trace  of  momen- 
tary disturbances."  Her  aunt  says:  "From  her  earhest  childhood  she 
was  unlike  any  other  person.  Very  lively  and  highly  gifted,  full  of  humor 
and  of  most  remarkable  daring." 

1845  —  Helena's  horse  bolted  with  her,  and,  as  she  fell,  her  foot 
caught  in  the  stirrup.  Notwithstanding  her  great  peril  she  felt  a  sus- 
taining power  holding  her  up. 

1846  —  Her  father  took  her  to  Paris  and  London  and  when  in  England 
they  stayed  a  week  at  Bath.  Her  English  at  this  time  had  a  very  strong 
Yorkshire  accent. 

1848  —  Married  to  General  Blavatsky,  (a  man  nearer  70  than  60 
years  of  age).  She  became  engaged  to  him  in  a  sort  of  joke  and  after- 
wards her  friends  would  not  let  her  break  it  off.  Finally  the  ceremony 
of  marriage  took  place  on  the  7th  of  July,  and  she  was  then  taken  to 
Daretchichag,  a  summer  retreat.  For  three  months  she  struggled  against 
the  claims  of  her  husband  and  finally  rode  off  to  Tifiis.  Thence  she  took 
the  steamer  Commodore  and  landed  at  Constantinople.     Here  she  met 

the  Countess   K and  traveled  for  a  time  in  Egypt,  Greece,  and 

other  parts  of  eastern  Europe. 

1849  —  Visited  Paris  and  London.  Stayed  at  Mivart's  Hotel  in 
London  with  Countess  B . 

1850  —  Touring  about  Europe  with  the  Countess  B . 


1851  —  At  Paris  in  January.  In  July  she  was  in  Canada  at  Quebec 
and  subsequently  at  New  Orleans. 

1852  —  About  this  time  went  from  New  Orleans  through  Texas  to 
Mexico.    At  this  time  also  had  a  legacy  left  her  of  80,000  rubles. 

1852  —  At  the  end  of  this  year,  Madame  Blavatsky  set  out  for  India. 
She  wanted  to  go  into  Tibet  through  Nepal,  but  was  hindered  by  the 
British  Resident  at  Nepal.  From  there  she  went  to  Southern  India, 
Java,  and  Singapore,  returning  to  England. 

1853  —  At  the  end  of  this  year  she  passed  to  New  York,  thence  to 
Chicago;  thence  to  the  far  West,  across  the  Rocky  Mountains  to  San 
Francisco. 

1855  —  Returned  to  India  via  Japan  and  the  Straits. 

1856  —  At  Lahore  met  a  German  friend  of  her  father  and  from  that 
place  made  a  second  attempt  to  get  into  Tibet. 

1858  —  Returned  to  Europe  via  Madras  and  Java  in  a  Dutch  vessel 
and  spent  some  months  in  France  and  Germany,  afterwards  rejoining 


24  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

her  own  people  at  Pskof,  about  180  miles  from  St.  Petersburg,  in  north- 
west Russia.  Madame  Yahontoff  (afterwards  Madame  Jelihovsky)  her 
sister,  was  staying  at  Pskof  with  General  N.  A.  Yahontoff  —  Marechal 
de  Noblesse  of  that  place  —  her  late  husband's  father.  During  this 
visit,  Madame  Blavatsky  secured  the  interest  of  her  brother  Leonide, 
by  holding,  untouched,  a  small  chess-table  against  his  strong  efforts  to 
move  it,  and  that  of  her  father  by  reading  his  unspoken  thought  "Zai- 
chik,"  the  name  of  his  favorite  war-horse  in  his  first  Turkish  campaign. 

1859  —  Early  in  this  year  H.  P.  B.  went  with  her  sister,  Madame  Y. 
to  a  village  called  Rugodevo,  in  the  district  Novorjef  in  the  government 
of  Pskof,  about  200  versts  from  St.  Petersburg. 

1860  —  In  the  spring  of  this  year  H.  P.  B.  had  a  terrible  illness. 
She  had  received  a  remarkable  wound  (possibly  when  traveling  in  the 
steppes  of  Asia.)  This  re-opened  occasionally  and  she  suffered  intense 
agony  —  the  sickness  would  last  three  or  four  days,  then  the  wound 
would  heal  suddenly  and  no  trace  of  it  remain.  It  was  near  the  heart. 
She  left  Rugodevo  for  Tiflis  in  the  Caucasus  via  Moscow.  At  Zadonsk 
they  saw  the  learned  Isidore,  then  the  Metropohtan  of  Kiev  and  later 
(1884)  Metropohtan  of  St.  Petersburg,  whom  they  had  kno^vn  as  a  friend 
of  the  family  when  he  was  Exarch  of  Georgia  (Caucasus),  who  on  parting 
blessed  H.  P.  B.  with  the  following  words:  "As  for  you  let  not  your 
heart  be  troubled  by  the  gift  you  are  possessed  of,  nor  let  it  become  a 
source  of  misery  to  you  hereafter,  for  it  was  surely  given  to  you  for  some 
purpose  and  you  could  not  be  held  responsible  for  it.  Quite  the  reverse, 
for  if  you  but  use  it  with  discrimination,  you  will  be  enabled  to  do  much 
good  to  your  fellow-creatures." 

About  1862  H.  P.  B.  resided  at  Tiflis  less  than  two  years  and  not 
more  than  three  in  the  Caucasus;  the  last  year  she  passed  roaming  about 
in  Imeritia,  Georgia,  and  MingreHa.  In  the  latter  country  she  had  another 
serious  illness,  was  often  comatose,  and  was  with  great  difficulty  brought 
to  Tiflis,  where  she  arrived  apparently  dying.  Soon  she  was  restored 
to  life  again  and  left  the  Caucasus,  going  to  Italy. 

1863-1866  —  Always  traveling. 

1867-1870  —  This  period  was  passed  in  the  East  and  if  recorded, 
would  probably  be  found  the  most  interesting  period  of  H.  P.  B's  event- 
ful Hfe. 

1870  —  Returned  from  the  East  via  the  Suez  Canal,  spent  a  short 
time  in  the  Piraeus,  thence  took  passage  for  Spezzia  on  a  Greek  vessel, 
which  was  blown  up,  en  route,  by  an  explosion  of  gunpowder  and  fire- 
works (part  of  the  cargo).  H.  P.  B.  with  a  small  number  of  passengers, 
was  saved,  but  everything  was  lost  of  her  belongings,  and  she  went  to 
Alexandria  and  thence  to  Cairo  to  await  supplies  from  Russia.    At  this 


INCIDENTS   IN   THE   LIFE   OF   H.    P.    BLAVATSKY  25 

period  she  passes  from  "apprenticeship  to  duty"  and  she  alone  appreci- 
ated the  magnitude  of  her  mission. 

1871  —  She  set  to  work  in  Egypt,  where  she  happened  to  be  —  founded 
a  society,  which  should  have  the  investigation  of  spiritualistic  phenomena 
for  its  purpose,  designing  to  lead  it  through  to  paths  of  higher  knowledge 
in  the  end.  Here  she  met  Madame  Coulomb.  She  was  very  much  disgusted 
with  the  class  of  people  who  flocked  around  her,  and  she  very  soon  shut 
up  her  Societe,  going  to  live  at  Bulak,  near  the  Museum.  She  after- 
wards returned  to  Europe  via  Palestine,  lingering  for  some  months  there 
and  making  a  journey  to  Palmyra  and  other  ruins. 

1872  —  At  the  end  of  this  year  she  returned  to  her  family  who  were 
now  staying  at  Odessa. 

1873  —  In  the  early  part  of  this  year  H.  P.  B.  left  Russia  and  went 
to  Paris,  where  she  stayed  with  her  cousin,  Nicholas  Hahn,  in  the  Rue 
de  rUniversite,  for  two  months.  Thence  she  was  directed  to  visit  the 
United  States,  and  arrived  in  July  1873,  at  New  York,  where  she  v/as 
for  over  six  years  and  got  her  naturalization  papers,  only  visiting  for 
a  few  months  other  cities  and  places. 

1874  —  During  this  year  she  lived  in  apartments  in  Irving  Place, 
New  York,  and  in  October  she  went  to  the  Eddy  farmhouse,  Vermont. 

1875  —  In  October  and  November  of  this  year  H.  P.  B.  with  the  help 
of  W.  Q.  Judge  and  others  founded  the  Theosophical  Society  in  New  York 
City.  The  objects  of  the  Society  as  stated  in  an  early  code  of  rules  were 
as  follows: 

(a)  To  keep  alive  in  man  his  spiritual  intuitions. 

(b)  To  oppose  and  counteract  —  after  due  investigation  and  proof  of  its  irrational  nature 
—  bigotry  in  every  form,  whether  as  an  intolerant  religious  sectarianism  or  belief  in  miracles 
or  anything  supernatural. 

(c)  To  promote  a  feeling  of  brotherhood  among  nations  and  assist  in  the  international  ex- 
change of  useful  arts  and  products,  by  advice,  information  and  the  cooperation  of  all  worthy 
individuals  and  associations:  provided  however,  that  no  benefit  or  percentage  shall  be  taken 
by  the  Society  for  its  corporate  services. 

(</)  To  seek  to  obtain  a  knowledge  of  all  the  laws  of  nature,  and  aid  in  diffusing  it:  and 
especially  to  encourage  the  study  of  those  laws  least  understood  by  modern  people,  and  so 
termed  the  occult  science.  Popular  superstition  and  folk-lore,  however  fantastical,  when 
sifted  may  lead  to  the  discovery  of  long-lost  but  important  secrets  of  nature.  The  Society 
therefore  aims  to  pursue  this  line  of  inquiry  in  the  hope  to  widen  the  field  of  scientific  and 
philosophical  observation. 

(e)  To  gather  for  the  Society's  library  and  put  into  written  forms,  correct  information 
upon  the  various  ancient  philosophic  traditions  and  legends,  and,  as  the  Council  shall  decide 
it  permissible,  disseminate  the  same  in  such  practical  v»ays  as  the  translation  and  publication 
of  original  works  of  value,  and  extracts  from  and  commentaries  upon  the  same,  or  the  oral 
instruction  of  persons  learned  in  their  respective  departments. 

(/)  To  promote  in  every  practical  way,  in  countries  where  needed,  the  spread  of  non- 
sectarian  education. 

(g)  Finally  and  chiefly  to  encourage  and  assist  individual  fellows  in  self-improvement, 
intellectual,  moral  and  spiritual.    But  no  fellow  shall  put  to  his  selfish  use  any  knowledge 


26  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

communicated  to  him  by  any  member  of  the  First  Section:  the  violation  of  this  rule  being 
punishable  by  expulsion.  And  before  any  such  knowledge  can  be  imparted,  the  person  shall 
bind  himself  by  a  solemn  oath  not  to  use  it  to  selfish  purposes  nor  to  reveal  it  except  with 
permission  of  the  Teacher. 

1874-1875  —  H.  P.  B.  removed  from  Irving  Place  to  Thirty-fourth 
Street,  New  York,  and  thence  after  a  few  months  to  Forty-seventh 
Street,  where  she  stayed  till  December,  1878. 

1877-1878  —  At  the  latter  address,  she  wrote  Isis  Unveiled,  in  1877. 

1879  —  In  this  year  H.  P.  B.  went  to  Bombay;  she  was  much 
annoyed  by  being  watched  by  the  authorities,  but  soon  afterwards  this 
espionage  was  dropped.     In  December  she  visited  Allahabad. 

1880  —  During  this  year  she  was  at  Simla  where  many  of  the  events 
recorded  in  the  Occult  World  occurred. 

1880-1881  —  At  this  time  H.  P.  B.  took  a  trip  to  Ceylon. 

1881  —  The  Headquarters  of  the  Theosophical  Society  were  es- 
tablished at  Beach  Candy,  in  a  bungalow  called  Crow's  Nest.  Here  it 
was  that  the  magazine  Theosophist  was  edited.  Later  this  year  H.  P.  B. 
visited  Allahabad  and  Simla  again. 

1881  —  On  December  16th  or  17th  the  Calcutta  newspaper.  States- 
man, apologized  for  an  attack  on  H.  P.  B.  under  threat  from  her  solicitors. 

1882  —  The  autumn  of  this  year  was  spent  at  Bombay,  when  H.  P.  B. 
was  taken  very  seriously  ill,  suffering  from  Bright's  disease  of  the  kidneys. 
Her  Teacher  sent  a  chela  from  the  Nilgerri  Hills,  requiring  her  to  go 
somewhere  in  the  Himalayas.  She  was  across  the  frontier  in  Tibet  only 
for  two  or  three  days  and  then  returned  practically  well  again.  In  De- 
cember a  valedictory  address  was  delivered  to  H.  P.  B.  and  her  helpers 
on  the  eve  of  her  departure  for  Madras,  in  which  it  was  stated  that  many 
"brave  hearts  from  Lahore  and  Simla  to  Ceylon,  from  Calcutta  to  Kathia- 
war,  from  Gujerat  and  Allahabad  —  Parsis,  Hindus,  Buddhists,  Jews, 
Mohammedans  and  Europeans"  attested  how  far  her  attempts  to  es- 
tablish Universal  Brotherhood  had  succeeded  during  the  brief  stay  of 
four  years. 

1883  —  Established  at  Adyar,  a  suburb  of  Madras,  in  a  house  with 
extensive  grounds.  The  upper  rooms  of  this  house  were  the  private  do- 
main of  H.  P.  B.,  and  here  many  leading  Anglo-Indian  residents  went 
to  see  her. 

1884  —  In  this  year  H.  P.  B.  went  to  Europe,  arriving  at  Nice  in 
March,  thence  to  Paris,  where  Solovyoff  and  others  were  met  at  the 
Rue  Notre  Dame  des  Champs,  46,  which  was  the  center  of  the  Theo- 
sophical Society  at  Paris,  and  which  was  visited  by  W.  Q.  Judge,  and 
others,  including  Madame  Jelihovsky  (H.  P.  B.'s  sister)  in  June.  On 
April  7th  H.  P.  B.  arrived  in  London,  on  the  evening  of  a  meeting  of  the 


INCIDENTS   IN   THE   LIFE   OF   H.    P.    BLAVATSKY  27 

London  Lodge,  which,  in  the  preceding  March,  she  had  described  as 
being  in  its  "sharpest  crisis."  She  only  stayed  a  week,  returning  to 
Paris  and  again  going  to  London  on  the  29th  of  June.  Thence  in  August 
she  visited  friends  at  Elberfeld,  Germany,  named  Gebhard. 

1885  —  H.  P.  B.  returned  once  more  to  India  and  had  a  great  reception 
from  a  delegation  of  native  students  of  the  Madras  Colleges.  Their 
address  signed  by  over  300  students  declared  that  "we  are  conscious  we 
are  giving  but  a  feeble  expression  to  the  debt  of  endless  gratitude  which 
India  lies  under  to  you."  Soon  afterwards  she  had  a  bad  illness  from  which 
she  had  another  remarkable  recovery  to  comparative  health.  About  the 
month  of  May  she  returned  to  Europe,  staying  for  a  time  near  Naples, 
and  thence  removing  to  a  quiet  little  town  (Wiirzburg)  in  Germany  some 
three  months  later.  In  October  of  this  year  and  at  this  little  town  H.  P.  B. 
commenced  The  Secret  Doctrine,  and  was  very  busy  at  it.  She  writes 
enthusiastically  of  it,  saying  in  one  letter  of  it:  "I  begin  to  think  it  shall 
vindicate  us.  Such  pictures,  panoramas,  scenes,  antediluvian  dramas, 
with  all  that!    Never  saw  or  heard  better." 

1887  —  H.  P.  B.  removed  to  London,  and  a  new  impetus  was  given 
to  the  work  there,  which  was  subsequently  centered  at  No.  19  Avenue 
Road,  Regent's  Park,  N.  W. 

1888  —  Publication  of  Tiie  Secret  Doctrine  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky. 

1889  —  The  Key  to  Theosophy  and  The  Voice  of  the  Silence  written 
and  published  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky. 

1S91— May  8.  Death  of  H.  P.  Blavatsky  at  19  Avenue  Road, 
Regent's  Park,  London. 


Theosophy  is  the  shoreless  ocean  of  universal  truth,  love,  and  wisdom, 
reflecting  its  radiance  on  the  earth;  while  the  Theosophical  Society  is  only  a 
visible  bubble  on  that  reflexion.  Theosophy  is  divine  nature,  visible  and 
invisible,  and  its  Society  human  nature  trying  to  ascend  to  its  divine  parent. 
Theosophy,  finally,  is  the  fixed,  eternal  sun,  and  its  Society  the  evanescent 
comet  trying  to  settle  in  an  orbit  to  become  a  planet,  ever  revolving  within 
the  attraction  of  the  sun  of  truth.  It  was  formed  to  assist  in  showing  to  men 
that  such  a  thing  as  Theosophy  exists,  and  to  help  them  to  ascend  toward  it 
by  studying  and  assimilating  its  eternal  verities. 

—  H.  P.  Blavatsky:  The  Key  to  Theosophy,  pp.  56-57 


H.    P.   BLAVATSKY,  THE  HERO 

H.  T.  Edge,  m.  a. 

THE  foes  of  Theosophy,  finding  its  teachings  unassailable,  have  resorted 
to  the  expedient  of  defaming  its  founder,  knowing  that  many  persons 
will  be  deterred  thereby  from  inquiring  further  into  Theosophy; 
though  there  are  others  v/ho,  despite  the  slanders,  insist  on  knowing  more 
of  Theosophy,  and  who  thereby  discover  the  falsity  of  the  slanders.  The 
name  of  H.  P.  Blavatsky  has  been  so  vindicated  by  her  pupils  and  by  the 
influence  of  the  work  she  initiated  that  the  world  is  attracted  by  any  men- 
tion of  her  whatever,  even  slanderous.  That  name  inspires  an  intense  and 
universal  interest :  it  is  impossible  seriously  to  defame  a  character  which  all 
instinctively  recognise  to  have  been  great  beyond  ordinary  measure. 
People  are  determined  to  know  all  they  can  about  H.  P.  Blavatsky;  and 
the  usually  sane  judgment  of  the  generality  has  recognised  in  such  defama- 
tions the  customary  crown  of  thorns  which  surrounds  the  head  of  those 
who  greatly  dare  in  the  cause  of  truth. 

The  poor  prosaic  disinherited  world !  How  it  clings  to  the  ideal  of  the 
great  personality !  How  wistfully  and  lovingly  it  cherishes  its  innate  belief 
in  the  grandeur  of  the  human  soul!  How  eagerly  it  embraces  the  chance 
of  finding  its  faith  and  hope  realized  in  some  actually  living  hero,  who 
may  serve  to  it  as  a  reminder  that  man  is  after  all  something  more  than  a 
miserable  sinner  or  a  perfected  monkey,  and  may,  once  in  a  while  at  least, 
achieve  the  manifestation  of  his  divine  attributes! 

There  can  be  no  doubt  but  a  very  large  number  of  people,  who  have 
either  not  heard  of  Madame  Blavatsky,  or  have  thought  but  little  about 
her,  will  on  hearing  such  misrepresentations,  at  once  procure  her  works 
and  read  them,  so  as  to  see  for  themselves  what  manner  of  woman  she  was; 
and  then  they  will  dismiss  from  their  mind  the  slanders  and  fables,  with 
a  note  of  thankfulness  that  these  have  been  the  means  of  introducing  them 
to  so  great  an  opportunity.  For  these  works  of  Madame  Blavatsky  prove 
that  their  author  could  never  have  been  anything  like  the  character 
depicted  in  the  fables,  and  that  she  never  could  at  any  time  of  her  life  have 
been  otherwise  than  a  personality  great  and  admirable  in  every  way. 

The  stories  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  of  Hypatia,  of  Socrates  —  of  many 
more  well  known  to  history  —  should  show  that,  whenever  a  great  Teacher 
appears  with  a  message  of  Truth,  Light,  and  Liberation  for  mankind, 
desperate  attempts  are  made  by  certain  people  of  unamiable  characteristics 


DONATED  BY 
KATHERINE  TINGLEY 

H.   P.   BLAVATSKY,   THE   HERO  29 

to  hustle  that  Teacher  out  of  sight,  out  of  mind,  off  the  face  of  the  earth. 
Truth,  Light,  and  Liberation  are  not  wanted  in  some  quarters.  That 
this  is  what  has  happened  in  the  case  of  H.  P.  Blavatsky  is  all  too  obvious, 
people  think;  and  they  insist  upon  knowing  what  was  the  message  which 
brought  so  much  joy  to  some,  to  others  so  much  trepidation  and  animosity. 
They  insist  upon  making  the  acquaintance  of  the  great  Soul  who  dared 
so  much,  but  whose  name  has  not  sunk  under  the  utmost  weight  of 
defamation  that  could  be  heaped  upon  it. 

The  great  Individual  has  always  counted  as  the  moving  force  in 
history.  It  is  in  vain  that  philosophers  try  to  represent  the  mass  of 
humanity  as  elevating  itself  by  its  own  gravitation,  like  so  much  dough 
generating  its  own  leaven.  The  moving  force  has  to  come  from  without. 
That  which  moves  the  body  is  Spirit;  and  though  Spirit  can  and  does 
operate  in  every  human  heart  that  opens  itself  thereto,  yet  it  operates 
eminently  in  certain  Individuals  who  appear  here  and  there,  from  time 
to  time,  and  by  their  superior  force,  their  loftier  standing-ground,  work 
more  mightily  among  men  than  do  the  hosts  of  lesser  souls  in  a  hundred 
years.  Faiths  and  philosophies  serve  man  well,  especially  when  he  has 
nothing  more  tangible  to  resort  to;  but  he  ever  goes  by  imitation  and 
looks  for  the  example:  the  visible  living  example  of  a  great  personality 
influences  us  far  more  than  any  number  of  books  and  sayings.  It  shows  us 
what  man  can  be,  what  we  may  ourselves  become.  It  sets  to  work  the 
instinct  of  imitation.  Our  eyes  are  turned  aloft,  and  our  footsteps  begin 
instinctively  to  turn  in  the  same  direction. 

"These  be  your  gods!"  says  materialism,  pointing  to  clay  models  of 
imaginary  human  ape-ancestors  ranged  along  the  museum-wall;  and 
"Behold  your  origin  and  kneel!"  says  another  kind  of  materialism,  point- 
ing to  the  picture  of  a  sullen  skin-clad  man  stealing  fruit  in  a  garden. 
But  man  is  prone  to  set  up  for  himself  better  ideals.  The  forbidden  fruit 
may  have  turned  his  brain,  but  it  never  soured  his  heart;  it  never  killed 
the  memory  of  his  divine  birth.  And,  conscious  of  his  own  failure,  he 
looks  wistfully  around  to  see  if  anybody  else  has  attained.  And  when 
he  sees  the  Great  One,  he  recognises  him,  and  his  heart  leaps  up,  though 
his  foolish  mind  may  doubt  and  rebel  against  the  voice  of  the  Soul. 

There  is  for  man  a  better  life  than  this  we  are  leading.  Such  is  the 
message  of  the  Teachers,  taught  not  in  words  alone,  but  by  the  example 
of  their  personality  and  their  life.  They  are  like  a  revelation,  a  letting  in 
of  the  sun. 

Instead  of  elaborating  new  systems,  they  always  point  to  that  which 
is  ancient  of  days,  to  Truth,  which  is  agelong  and  endures  throughout 
all  superficial  changes.  The  permanent  values  in  life  are  brought  to 
the  fore.    They  demonstrate  that  mankind  has  never  been  left  without  the 


30  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

Truth,  however  far  its  living  waters  may  recede  into  the  background; 
but  that  the  Truth  has  always  been  preserved  by  faithful  guardians. 
It  is  thus  that  we  find  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  in  the  preface  to  her  largest 
work,  The  Secret  Doctrine,  declaring  that 

"These  truths  are  in  no  sense  put  forward  as  a  revelation;  nor  does  the  author  claim  the 
position  of  a  revealer  of  mystic  lore  now  made  public  for  the  first  time  in  the  world's  history. 
For  what  is  contained  in  this  work  is  to  be  found  scattered  throughout  thousands  of  volumes 
embodying  the  scriptures  of  the  great  Asiatic  and  early  European  religions,  hidden  under 
glyph  and  symbol,  and  hitherto  left  unnoticed  because  of  this  veil.  What  is  now  attempted 
is  to  gather  the  oldest  tenets  together  and  to  make  of  them  one  harmonious  and  unbroken 
whole.  The  sole  advantage  which  the  writer  has  over  her  predecessors  is  that  she  need  not 
resort  to  personal  speculations  and  theories.  For  this  work  is  a  partial  statement  of  what 
she  herself  has  been  taught  by  more  advanced  students,  supplemented,  in  a  few  details  only, 
by  the  results  of  her  own  study  and  observation." 

Why  do  we  feel  such  fascination  for  the  gods  of  antiquity,  if  not  be- 
cause we  feel  inwardly  that  those  myths  inshrine  vital  truths?  These  gods 
and  heroes,  were  they  not  perhaps  modeled  on  the  memories  of  great  men 
that  really  walked  on  earth  in  brighter  ages  and  taught  mankind? 

The  phrase  'higher  powers  in  man'  is  one  to  conjure  with,  nowadays 
as  in  all  times.  Though  it  has  been  woefully  misused,  so  that  it  may  call 
up  in  some  minds  nothing  better  than  some  petty  and  ignoble  idea  of 
'occultism'  or  'psychism,'  we  must  look  beyond  the  travesty  to  the 
original  meaning.  When  H.  P.  Blavatsky  spoke  of  higher  powers  she 
meant  something  more  like  what  students  of  the  Bible  know  as  the 
fruits  of  the  Spirit,  she  meant  those  noble  attributes  which  mark  the 
hero  and  the  man  whose  genius  inspires,  and  is  inspired  by,  his  enthusiastic 
devotion  to  the  cause  of  Truth,  Light,  and  Liberation.  Hear  her  own 
words: 

"We  would  have  all  to  realize  that  spiritual  powers  exist  in  every  man." 

"The  duty  of  the  Theosophical  Society  is  to  keep  alive  in  man  his  spiritual  intuitions." 

"From  the  Theosophist  must  radiate  those  higher  spiritual  forces  which  alone  can  re- 
generate his  fellow-men." 

"Nature  gives  up  her  innermost  secrets  and  imparts  true  wisdom  only  to  him  who  seeks 
truth  for  its  own  sake  and  who  craves  knowledge  in  order  to  confer  benefits  on  others,  not  on 
his  own  unimportant  personality." 

"Occultism  is  not  magic.  It  is  comparatively  easy  to  learn  the  trick  of  spells  and  the 
methods  of  using  the  subtler,  but  still  material,  forces  of  physical  nature;  the  powers  of  the 
animal  soul  in  man  are  soon  awakened;  the  forces  which  his  love,  his  hate,  his  passion,  can  call 
into  operation,  are  readily  developed.  But  this  is  black  magic  —  sorcery.  For  it  is  the  motive, 
and  the  motive  alone,  which  makes  any  exercise  of  power  become  black  (malignant)  or  white 
(beneficent)  magic.  It  is  impossible  to  employ  spiritual  forces  if  there  is  the  slightest  tinge  of 
selfishness  remaining  in  the  operator." 

This  shows  that  H.  P.  Blavatsky's  sole  idea  was  one  of  service,  and  that 
the  higher  powers  she  meant  were  those  only  which  render  us  more 


H.   P.   BLAVATSKY,   THE   HERO  31 

potent  workers  in  the  great  cause.  Selfishness  is  the  cause  of  the  world's 
ills,  and  is  only  increased  by  the  development  of  powers  which  aggrandize 
the  personality.  It  is  only  by  arousing  in  man  motives  that  are  greater 
than  personal  desire  and  ambition  that  the  ills  due  to  selfishness  can  be 
withstood.  This  then  is  what  H.  P.  Blavatsky  came  to  do.  The  opposi- 
tion she  encountered  was  only  to  be  expected,  for  she  threw  down  the 
gauntlet  to  all  forces  of  stagnation  and  retrogression;  she  challenged  the 
existing  order  of  things.  Many  voices,  speaking  more  or  less  consciously 
in  the  name  of  this  great  opposition,  in  some  one  or  other  of  its  many 
forms,  were  raised  against  the  Teacher  and  her  work.  The  attempt  was 
made  to  create  a  legend,  to  create  a  mythical  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  and  imprint 
upon  the  pages  of  history  a  lie  that  should  hide  the  truth.  But  the  face 
has  been  torn  off  this  imposture,  and  the  real  H.  P.  Blavatsky  stands 
revealed.  The  forces  acting  against  such  a  great  Soul  are  somewhat  of 
the  nature  of  what  modern  psychologists  call  a  '  group  mind '  —  the 
aggregated  interests  of  large  bodies  with  vested  interests.  Such  a  group- 
mind  is  perhaps  not  fully  expressed  in  any  one  individual,  but  it  acts 
through  individuals,  who  may  be  conscious  agents  or  merely  impulsive 
and  unreflective  people  who  are  impelled  by  its  influence  upon  their 
instincts.  Whenever  some  king  or  notable  person  is  assassinated,  the 
immediate  agent  of  the  deed  is  usually  some  half-witted  individual  with 
a  purely  personal  grudge,  due  to  some  trivial  slight,  real  or  imaginary. 
And  in  the  case  of  H.  P.  Blavatsky  we  find  many  vicious  attacks  have 
emanated  from  people  of  this  unfortunate  constitution. 

The  Hero  is  an  ideal  ever  present  in  the  hearts  of  men,  who  feel 
that  in  the  Hero  is  shown  that  which  they  themselves  potentially  are 
and  miay  actually  become.  H.  P.  Blavatsky  was  a  Hero,  and  even  the 
attacks  on  her  demonstrate  it.    This  the  people  are  beginning  to  realize. 


If  the  action  of  one  reacts  on  the  lives  of  all  —  and  this  is  the  true  scientific 
idea  —  then  it  is  only  by  all  men  becoming  brothers  and  all  women  sisters, 
and  by  all  practising  in  their  daily  lives  true  brotherhood  and  true  sisterhood, 
that  the  real  human  solidarity  which  lies  at  the  root  of  the  elevation  of  the 
race  can  ever  be  attained.  It  is  this  action  and  interaction,  this  true  brother- 
hood and  sisterhood,  in  which  each  shall  live  for  all  and  all  for  each,  which  is 
one  of  the  fundamental  Theosophical  principles  that  every  Theosophist 
should  be  bound  not  only  to  teach,  but  to  carry  out  in  his  or  her  individual 
life. —  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  The  Key  to  Tlieosophy,  p.  230. 


TRIBUTES  TO 
HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

By  Some  of  her  Old  Pupils  resident  at  the  International 
Theosophical   Headquarters,   Point  Loma,   California 

HAVING  become  acquainted  with  some  of  the  teachings  of  Theosophy 
in  1887,  I  immediately  visited  Madame  Blavatsky  at  her  residence 
in  London,  for  the  purpose  of  seeing  and  knowing  one  who  I  felt 
must  be  a  great,  noble,  and  gifted  personality.  I  found  her  engrossed  in  the 
work  of  promulgating  Theosophy,  by  the  receptions  which  she  gave  to  all 
inquirers  and  by  her  books  and  her  magazine  Lucifer.  She  toiled  laborious- 
ly and  incessantly  at  a  work  which  not  only  brought  her  no  remuneration 
of  any  kind  but  which  was  often  indebted  to  her  for  assistance  from  her 
own  personal  estate.  These  labors  were  carried  on  against  the  obstacles 
of  ill-health  and  bitter  opposition.  She  soon  made  it  clear  to  me  that 
Theosophy  is  indeed  "the  most  serious  movement  of  the  age,"  and  that 
it  demands  from  its  students  unselfish  devotion  to  the  cause  of  human 
betterment,  and  an  unflinching  loyalty  to  truth,  honor,  and  justice. 
She  pointed  out  that  there  was  a  nobler  path  in  life  for  those  sincerely 
devoted  to  truth  and  willing  to  set  aside  their  own  personal  ambitions 
and  prejudices  in  order  to  follow  the  behests  of  truth;  and  her  own  daily 
life  was  the  best  vindication  of  her  teachings.  For  truly  H.  P.  Blavatsky 
followed  truth,  and  her  whole  hfe  was  a  constant  devotion  and  willing 
sacrifice  to  it.  My  acquaintance  with  her  continued  intimate  until  her 
death.  Our  relation  was  that  of  pupil  and  teacher,  and  she  never  failed 
to  educe  all  that  was  highest  and  best  in  my  nature,  and  to  set  my  foot- 
steps upon  that  path  which  she  herself  had  found  to  be  the  only  true  path 
for  humanity  to  follow  —  the  path  of  unselfish  devotion  to  the  cause  of 
Truth,  Light,  and  Liberation.  She  was  at  that  time  engaged  in  writing 
and  pubhshing  The  Secret  Doctrine  and  The  Voice  of  the  Silence;  and  she 
put  the  manuscript  of  the  latter  work  into  my  hands  to  read. 

I  felt  as  though  in  the  presence  of  a  true  friend,  one  who,  imlike  or- 
dinary friends,  knew  the  real  needs  of  my  heart;  and  who  ministered  to 
those  needs  without  flattering  self-love  or  any  other  personal  weakness. 
I  felt  as  though  in  the  presence  of  a  great  reality,  demonstrating  to  direct 
perception  the  truth  that  the  Soul  of  man  is  infinite,  eternal,  divine. 
No  words  can  express  my  sense  of  the  privilege  which  I  have  enjoyed  in 
knowing  this  Great  Soul,  one  of  humanity's  true  Helpers. —  H.  T.  Edge 


DONATED  BY 
KATHERINE  TINGLEY 


TRIBUTES  BY  PUPILS  33 


"CpVERY  attack  upon  H.  P.  Blavatsky  naturally  calls  forth  a  renewed 
^^^  expression  of  love  and  reverence  from  those  who  knew  her  best. 
This  is  really  the  final  reply  to  such  attacks,  whatever  others  may  also 
be  necessary  —  often  better  and  m^ore  convincing  to  those  who  did  not 
know  her  than  one  more  direct.  We  who  really  knew  her  as  she  was, 
tell  what  we  saw,  picture  her  as  we  knew  her,  say  what  she  did  for  us  and 
what  she  was  trying  to  inspire  us  to  do  and  to  become.  The  picture  can 
stand  of  itself  as  a  sufficient  reply  to  the  slanders;  for  there  is  nothing 
in  common  between  this  and  the  grotesque  picture  which  her  enemies 
desire  that  the  public  should  accept  as  her  likeness.  It  would  indeed  be 
also  enough  to  point  to  her  writings,  without  any  direct  testimony  of  ours. 
The  nobility  and  power  of  the  writer's  character,  her  love  of  truth  and  of 
humanity,  her  desire  to  better  the  conditions  of  human  life  and  to  make 
men  and  women  realize  their  higher  possibilities  and  give  them  hope  and 
light  —  all  these  shine  unmistakably  and  transparently  through  every- 
thing that  came  from  her  pen. 

As  one  of  those  who  knew  her  well,  one  of  those  to  whom  came,  from 
contact  with  her,  the  awakening  of  all  that  was  best  in  their  nature, 
I,  like  the  rest,  welcome  this  new  chance  to  go  on  record  in  her  defence. 

The  first  impression  she  made  upon  me  (and  on  everyone  else,  whether 
they  thereafter  loved  or  hated  her)  was  of  a  personality  of  immense 
strength,  both  of  will  and  intellect.  Most  people,  moreover,  felt  more  or 
less  consciously  that  she  understood  their  hidden  nature.  Some,  for  good 
reasons,  resented  this  clear  insight  into  them.selves.  Others,  those  who 
could  feel  her  compassion  for  human  weaknesses  so  long  as  some  good  was 
struggling  there  through  them,  and  her  magnetic  appeal  to  and  encourage- 
ment of  their  own  best  ideals,  loved  her. 

To  me  she  became  from  the  first  moment  I  saw  her,  my  Teacher  and 
friend.  Her  kindness  to  me  from  the  first  and  all  along  until  her  death 
is  ever  present  in  my  memory. 

Some  faces  have  the  marks  of  a  weight  of  suffering  which  has  crushed. 
Her  face  had  every  line  that  pain  can  give,  but,  as  visibly,  it  had  never 
weakened  her  will.  Nor  had  it  embittered  her  nor  even  quenched  her 
strong  sense  of  humor. 

Her  center  of  consciousness  was  not  in  herself  but  in  her  work  for 
humanity.  She  was  incapable  of  self-pity  or  of  fear  for  herself.  She  was 
hurt  by  attacks  on  herself  only  in  so  far  as  they  hurt  her  work;  was  hurt 
by  treachery  and  ingratitude  only  because  they  were  at  all,  and  not 
because  they  were  with  regard  to  herself.  And  she  served  and  tried  to 
help  the  traitor  and  the  ingrate  to  the  last  moment  of  opportunity. 

When  I  first  knew  her  (at  Lansdowne  Road  and  at  Avenue  Road  in 
London,  England)  she  was  aware,  I  think,  that  she  had  not  long  to  live. 


34  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

And  SO  she  was  making  every  effort,  working  in  some  way  from  morning 
to  late  at  night  without  a  break,  to  get  the  utmost  possible  of  her  message 
into  the  public  mind  and  into  the  minds  of  those  about  her  and  her  special 
group  of  pupils.  She  had  very  much  more  to  give  than  any  of  us  were 
capable  of  taking.  Theosophy  requires  the  development  of  the  whole 
inner  nature,  not  of  intellect  only,  for  its  apprehension.  And  so  the 
Teacher  had  to  wait  upon  the  growth  of  the  pupil's  higher  faculties, 
dependent  upon  his  own  efforts  in  spiritualizing  his  life  and  consciousness. 

She  did  her  utmost,  as  I  have  said,  working  without  ceasing,  writing 
for  the  public,  issuing  instructions  to  her  Esoteric  School,  personally 
teaching  those  about  her  and  especially  the  few  who  composed  her  *  Inner 
Group,'  often  present  at  the  meetings  of  the  Lodge  of  her  name,  the 
Blavatsky  Lodge,  and  mostly  keeping  open  house  in  the  evenings  for 
inquirers  who  wished  to  discuss  with  her  or  question  her. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  go  into  detail  concerning  her  work.  I  desired 
merely  to  put  on  record  some  expression  of  my  feeling  for  one  of  humanity's 
great  Initiate  Teachers.  In  coming  centuries  every  word  from  those 
who  knew  her  will  be  increasingly  treasured  for  any  light  it  may  throw 
upon  her  character. —  Herbert  Coryn 


TT  was  in  1886  that  I  made  the  acquaintance  of  Madame  Blavatsky  in 
-■'  London  and  visited  her  at  the  house  in  Lansdowne  Road,  where  she 
was  then  living.  In  1888  I  joined  the  Theosophical  Society  and  attended 
the  meetings  of  the  Blavatsky  Lodge,  which  met  at  the  house  of  the 
foundress  of  the  Society  in  Lansdowne  Road,  at  that  time.  Madame 
Blavatsky  was  present  on  all  the  occasions  of  my  weekly  visits,  and  took 
part  in  all  the  proceedings,  answering  questions  as  to  the  teachings  of 
Theosophy,  and  incidentally  speaking  on  a  great  range  of  topics  more 
or  less  connected  with  the  main  subject  of  study,  Theosophy. 

The  thing  that  had  compelled  my  attention  to  this  subject  was  my 
intense  conviction  of  the  absolute  sincerity  of  the  foundress  of  the  Society, 
and  of  her  power  to  expound  the  true  teachings  of  Theosophy,  as  well  as 
of  her  fitness  to  be  a  guide  to  one  who  aspired  to  lead  a  higher  life.  My 
conviction  was  based  on  my  own  personal  observation  and  judgment  of 
character,  and  not  at  all  on  anybody's  evidence  or  opinions.  So,  when 
in  later  years,  I  heard  stories  of  a  kind  that  did  not  agree  with  my  own 
observations  and  conclusions,  I  was  not  influenced  by  them,  but  found 
support  for  my  faith  in  Madame  Blavatsky  as  a  spiritual  teacher  in  the 
internal  evidence  supplied  by  her  works,  such  as  The  Secret  Doctrine, 
The  Voice  of  the  Silence,  and  The  Key  to  Theosophy;  all  of  which  were 
produced  after  my  first  meeting  with  the  writer. 


TRIBUTES   BY   PUPILS  35 

The  more  I  studied  her  works  the  stronger  grew  my  faith  in  the 
reality  of  Madame  Blavatsky's  mission,  and  in  her  ability  to  transmit  to 
the  world  the  teachings  intrusted  to  her  for  that  purpose.  It  seemed 
to  me  that  her  devotion  to  the  cause  of  Theosophy  was  absolute,  and 
was  wholly  disinterested. 

I  saw  that  she  suffered  acutely  from  the  slanders  that  were  circulated 
about  her  former  life,  but  I  felt  that  no  amount  of  calumny  could  turn 
her  from  the  task  which  she  had  undertaken,  and  which  she  was  carry- 
ing out  under  conditions  of  ill-health  that  seemed  to  make  work  of 
any  kind  impossible. 

It  was  obvious  that  her  self-sacrificing  devotion  to  the  cause  of  Theo- 
sophy could  bring  to  herself  no  other  reward  than  denunciation  and 
viUfication,  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other  the  very  doubtful  support 
of  those  who  were  anxious  to  get  from  her  some  of  the  vast  store  of  know- 
ledge that  was  evidently  at  her  command.  While  a  few  earnest  followers 
honestly  endeavored  to  lead  the  life  and  to  follow  the  teacher,  the  majority 
of  those  who  called  themselves  her  followers  were  in  reality  seeking 
knowledge  for  their  own  gratification,  rather  than  for  the  service  of 
humanity.  Some  of  these  resented  what  they  contemptuously  called 
the  "parrot-cry  of  Brotherhood,"  which  the  "old  lady"  was  constantly 
insisting  upon  as  the  foundation  of  Theosophy,  and  which  they  con- 
sidered  "mere  ethics." 

In  spite  of  the  constant  failure  of  her  professed  followers  to  understand 
her,  and  the  unscrupulous  misrepresentations  of  avowed  enemies,  she 
never  lost  faith  in  the  cause,  nor  wavered  in  her  absolute  devotion  to  the 
task  she  had  undertaken.  Suffering  martyrdom  both  mentally  and  physic- 
ally, she  worked  indefatigably,  and  her  writing  showed  no  trace  of  her 
physical  condition,  which  was  such  as  to  make  her  life  a  wonder  in  itself 
and  her  hterary  achievement  a  marvel. 

What  need  to  refute  attacks  upon  her  character,  when  there  remain 
such  monuments  to  her  nobility  of  soul  and  intellect  as  The  Secret  Doctrine, 
The  Voice  of  the  Silence,  Isis  Unveiled,  and  The  Key  to  Theosophy? 

—  Reginald  Willoughby  Machell 


TDRIOR  to  meeting  Madame  H.  P.  Blavatsky  in  London  in  1888  I  had 
-'■  been  admitted,  along  with  others  in  Dublin,  to  membership  in  the 
Theosophical  Society  by  William  Q.  Judge,  then  on  a  visit  to  Ireland. 
At  that  time  I  had  already  become  familiar  with  the  details  of  many 
infamous  attacks  which  had  been  fulminated  against  the  honor  and 
integrity  of  the  Foundress,   H.  P.  Blavatsky. 

The  pettiness  and  feebleness  as  to  fact  of  all  these,  stood  out  in  clear- 


36  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

cut  contrast  with  the  spiritual  nobiUty  of  her  wi'itings  in  Isis  Unveiled 
and  the  magazines  edited  by  her,  and  such  accusations  but  served  to 
strengthen  one's  enthusiasm  for  the  great  principles  which  underlie  the 
idea  of  man's  essential  soUdarity  —  to  the  philosophic  rationale  of  which, 
demonstrated  by  her  work  and  her  references  to  the  lore  and  knowledge 
of  countless  Teachers  throughout  the  long  ages,  she  had  devoted  her 
life-energies  and  her  very  heart's  blood. 

Such  attacks  brought  her  unremitting  suffering,  as  affecting  the  Cause 
she  labored  for;  yet,  for  us  beginners  in  the  Science  of  Life,  they  showed 
well  the  inherent  weaknesses  of  our  complex  nature,  and  enabled  us 
better  to  realize  the  enormous  import  to  the  race  of  the  message  Theosophy 
holds  out  —  a  message  delivered  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky  in  no  uncertain 
terms,  and  in  fact  with  a  vigor,  an  eloquence,  and  an  amplitude  of  historic 
and  philosophic  detail  unrivaled  in  known  history.  While  iconoclastically 
tearing  to  tatters  most  of  the  generally  accepted  beliefs  and  dogmas, 
scientific  or  otherwise,  she  stands  revealed  in  her  writings  as  a  Master- 
builder  possessed  of  a  complete  constructive  philosophy  of  practical  life 
and  equally  of  cosmogenesis  and  anthropogenesis,  as  known  to  the  Elder 
Brothers  of  the  race  for  incalculable  ages.  Withal  so  humble  that  at  the 
outset  of  her  colossal  work  The  Secret  Doctrine  she  writes  (paraphrasing 
Montaigne),  "I  have  here  made  only  a  nosegay  of  culled  flowers,  and 
have  brought  nothing  of  my  own  but  the  string  that  ties  them." 

When  she  founded  the  Theosophical  Society  in  1875  in  New  York, 
she  said  to  Mr.  Judge  that  she  was  embarking  on  a  work  that  would  draw 
upon  her  unmerited  slander,  implacable  malice,  uninterrupted  misunder- 
standing, constant  work,  and  no  worldly  reward.  In  this,  if  in  nothing 
else,  she  was  a  true  prophet.  Her  main  purpose  was  to  permeate  the 
world  with  the  ideas  and  teaching  of  the  ancient  Wisdom-Religion,  primal 
source  of  all  the  world-religions.  It  certainly  was  not  to  promulgate 
spiritualism,  marvel-seeking,  or  psychism  of  any  kind.  Let  her  writings 
attest. 

She  brought  to  both  east  and  west  the  truths  so  long  obscured  regarding 
the  great  laws  of  Karma,  Reincarnation,  and  the  dual  nature  of  man, 
together  with  a  spiritual  philosophy  so  exalted  as  to  furnish  the  keynote 
for  many  successive  lives  of  aspiration  and  endeavor.  The  few  quotations 
appended  from  her  writings  indicate  in  part  the  purpose  of  this  great 
and  wise  Teacher  —  beloved  by  thousands  who  have  never  seen  her  at  all. 

—  Fred  J.   Dick 


TRIBUTES  TO 

HELENA     PETROVNA     BLAVATSKY 

by  some  of  her  students  and  others  at  the  international 
Theosophical   Headquarters,   Point   Loma,   California 

EVERY  attack  upon  H.  P.  Blavatsky  must  be  welcomed  by  those  who 
knew  her  and  have  remained  loyal  to  her  work  and  purposes.  For 
it  is  one  more  opportunity  for  them  to  put  on  record  their  love  of 
her  and  their  reverence  for  her  as  a  Teacher,  and  also  their  gratitude  to  her 
for  having  awakened  them  to  recognition  of  their  higher  possibilities. 
They  know  that  her  life  was  ideal  in  its  unselfishness  and  devotion,  wholly 
consecrated  to  the  work  she  had  taken  upon  herself,  wholly  motived  by 
love  of  the  race.  In  the  coming  centuries  she  will  take  her  place  as  one 
of  the  line  of  the  great  spiritual  Teachers  of  Humanity. —  Herbert  Coryn 

Our  first  great  Teacher,  Helena  Petrovna  Blavatsky  —  while  icono- 
clastically  tearing  to  shreds  most  of  the  conventionally  accepted  dogmas, 
scientific  or  otherwise  —  stands  revealed  in  her  writings  as  a  Master- 
builder  in  possession  of  a  constructive  philosophy  of  practical  life  and 
equally  of  cosmogenesis  and  anthropogenesis,  as  taught  to  the  few  by 
Elder  Brothers  of  the  race  through  incalculable  ages.  She  brought  to  east 
and  west  important  truths,  long  obscured,  regarding  the  great  laws  of 
karma  and  reincarnation,  especially  as  related  to  the  dual  nature  of  man; 
and  outlined  a  spiritual  philosophy  whose  nobility  can  furnish  keynotes 
to  many  fives  of  endeavor. —  Fred  J.  Dick 

The  crowning  privilege  of  an  eventful  life  has  been  my  intimate  per- 
sonal relationship  with  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  as  pupil  of  that  great  Teacher. 
This  extended  from  1887  until  her  death,  while  she  was  carr^dng  on  at  her 
London  residence  her  work  of  promulgating  Theosophy,  by  her  receptions 
to  inquirers  and  the  publication  of  her  books  and  magazine.  She  showed 
me  that  Theosophy  is  the  most  serious  movement  of  the  age,  and  that  it 
requires  of  its  adherents  entire  devotion  to  the  Heart-Doctrine;  and  her 
own  fife  was  the  noblest  exemplar  of  her  teachings.  In  the  face  of  illness, 
incessant  and  malicious  opposition,  and  at  great  pecuniary  sacrifice,  she 
toiled  heroically  at  her  great  work  for  the  bringing  of  Truth,  Light,  and 
Liberation  to  discouraged  humanity. —  H.  T.  Edge 


38  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

I  MET  Madame  Blavatsky  in  1886  and  joined  the  Theosophical  Society 
in  the  following  year,  attending  the  meetings  of  the  Blavatsky  Lodge 
first  at  her  house  in  Lansdowne  Road,  London  W.  and  later  at  Avenue 
Road,  N.  W.  My  interest  in  Theosophy  was  to  a  great  degree  due  to 
my  conviction  of  the  absolute  sincerity  of  the  Foundress  of  the  Society,  as 
well  as  of  her  ability  to  give  the  highest  instruction  in  every  branch  of 
the  subject.  I  saw  that  her  devotion  to  the  cause  was  absolute  and  was 
entirely  disinterested;  my  faith  in  her  and  my  interest  in  Theosophy 
have  grown  with  the  years. —  Reginald  W.  Machell 

What  most  deeply  impressed  me  when  I  met  Helena  Petrovna  Bla- 
vatsky in  1889  was  her  deep  insight  into  human  nature,  her  marvelous 
wisdom,  her  sincerity,  her  generosity.  I  became  a  member  of  the  original 
Theosophical  Society  in  the  same  year,  and  have  ever  since  been  an  active 
worker  in  it.  Words  fail  to  express  the  gratitude  I  feel  to  Mme.  Blavatsky. 
Only  her  peers  can  estimate  the  greatness  of  her  character,  her  wisdom,  her 
self-sacrifice,  her  devotion  to  Truth  and  the  Cause  of  Humanity;  and 
she  was  without  peer  in  the  nineteenth  century.  As  Foundress  of  the 
present  Theosophical  Movement,  and  its  first  Teacher,  she  proclaimed 
again  the  Truths  of  the  ancient  Wisdom-Religion.  Through  its  teachings 
—  the  Divinity  of  Man,  the  Freedom  of  the  Soul,  Universal  Brotherhood, 
Karma,  Reincarnation, —  she  gave  a  new  meaning  to  life  and  opened  the 
way  for  a  new  understanding  of  its  problems;  she  brought  new  hope  to  the 
world  and  has  made  Humanity  her  debtor. 

—  Elizabeth   Churchill   Spalding 

For  four  years  a  pupil  of  Mme.  Blavatsky,  for  thirty-four  a  close 
student  of  her  writings,  I  regard  it  an  inestimable  privilege  to  pay  homage 
publicly  to  her  ability,  her  devotion  to  the  welfare  of  humanity,  her  bound- 
less Compassion.  It  was  she  who  brought  forward,  in  the  midst  of  a 
selfish  civilization,  the  unselfish  doctrine  of  life  for  the  sake  of  others  and 
the  renunciation  of  personal  salvation  through  the  attainment  of  bliss  in 
a  Heaven  of  egotistic  happiness.  Through  her  work  and  her  teachings 
mankind  is  being  guided  to  a  goal  of  attainment  heretofore  undreamed  of. 

—  H.    T.    Patterson 

With  the  discovery  of  new  facts  in  physical  science  come  the  verifica- 
tions, one  by  one,  of  the  suggestions  and  affirmations  which  were  made  with 
assurance  forty  years  ago  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  when  she  so  courageously 
braved  the  obloquy  and  hard-headed  prejudices  of  materialistic  tendencies 
of  the  last  century.    Also  in  the  vindication  of  Ancient  Wisdom,  concern- 


DONATED  BY 
KATHERINE  TINGLEY 

TRIBUTES  BY  STUDENTS  39 

ing  the  origin,  development,  and  destiny  of  man,  slowly-growing  know- 
ledge concedes  now  what  she  then  declared  with  such  certainty. 

How  long  will  it  be  before  her  immeasurable  service  to  Humanity 
will  be  fully  recognised,  and  the  once  implacable  traducers  are  silenced 
for  ever?  —  E.  A.  Neresheimer 

"At  the  roaring  loom  of  time  I  ply,  and  weave  for  God  the  garment  thou  seest  him  by." 

In  London,  in  the  year  1889,  I  stood  for  the  first  time  in  the  presence 
of  H.  P.  Blavatsky  and  listened  to  her  words  of  wisdom  and  the  cheering 
optimism  of  her  voice;  words  that  changed  the  whole  current  of  my  life, 
until,  in  course  of  time,  I  grew  to  recognise  her  as  my  Teacher  and  as 
one  of  those  Great  Souls  who,  from  century  to  century,  again  and  again, 
appear  among  men  as  benefactors  of  the  human  race. 

In  her  versatility  and  erudition  she  had  that  'grand  manner'  that 
soared  above  and  swept  aside  her  would-be  detractors.  —  As  said  by  one 
of  her  pupils:  "Those  who  do  not  understand  H.  P.  Blavatsky  had 
better  not  try  to  explain  her." 

She  stands  in  the  forefront  of  the  Immortals  —  and,  with  her,  her 
successors,  WilHam  Q.  Judge  and  Katherine  Tingley. —  C.  Thurston 

When  the  Great  Theosophist  H.  P.  Blavatsky  brought  her  wonderful 
message  to  us  in  the  last  quarter  of  the  century  just  closed,  loyal  friends 
and  followers,  and  bitter  and  spiteful  enemies  stood  arrayed,  these  against 
those:  the  former  in  defense  and  support;  the  latter,  to  destroy  if  they 
might.  At  present,  the  defamers  and  their  parasitic  satellites  have  been 
beaten  all  along  the  line,  but  the  fight  is  not  yet  ended.  As  Katherine 
Tingley,  H.  P.  Blavatsky's  Successor,  has  very  lately  said,  most  propitious 
and  most  promising  is  the  present  time  for  dealing  a  smashing  blow  at 
cowardly  attacks  upon  a  dead  woman's  reputation  and  good  name. 

To  that  wonderful  woman,  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  and  to  her  great  Suc- 
cessors, my  heart  goes  out,  and  will  return  to  me  never  again.  I  know 
H.  P.  Blavatsky;  knowing  her,  I  love  her;  loving  her,  I  follow  her  and 
her  Successors,  forever. —  G.  v.  Purucker 

I  attended  meetings  conducted  by  Mme.  Blavatsky  at  the  London 
Headquarters  of  the  Theosophical  Society  during  the  months  of  March 
and  April  1891  —  having  applied  for  membership  to  the  Society  which 
she  had  founded. 

Mme.  Blavatsky  impressed  me  as  one  who  personified  what  she  urged 
others  to  estabhsh  in  their  own  natures.  Her  example  compelled  one  to 
reahze  that  spiritual  life  is  not  a  'free  gift,'  but  the  product  of  self-effort 


40  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

along  true  lines.  Her  writings  abundantly  testify  that  each  man's  per- 
ception of  truth  is  strictly  relative  to  the  exercise  of  the  powers  of  his 
spiritual  will  to  overcome  and  become,  and  that  by  sounding  the  depths 
of  his  nature  he  may  attain  identity  with  the  Divine  Law  which  regulates 
all  life.  Her  influence  upon  modern  life  is  that  of  having  re-introduced  a 
mode  of  thought  which  embraces  hitherto  detached  fragments  of  know- 
ledge and  experience  as  integral  parts  of  one  whole,  pointing  the  way  by 
which  the  will,  the  intellect,  and  the  sensibilities  may  be  blended  into  one 
power  under  the  control  of  the  spiritual  and  essentially  divine  Higher  Self. 

—  William  A.   Dunn 

Every  student  of  H.  P.  Blavatsky  owes  to  her  a  debt  of  gratitude  in- 
expressible in  words.  She  possessed  not  only  the  desire  to  serve  the  world, 
but  the  rare  and  needful  knowledge.  Her  superb  courage  knew  no  Hmit; 
her  devotion  to  duty  was  absolute;    her  love  for  humanity,  boundless. 

The  keenest  minds,  the  sincerest  lovers  of  mankind,  have  evidenced 
their  recognition  of  this,  and  bow  in  reverence  before  her  transcendent 
genius  for  Service.  The  longer  those  live  who  have  felt  her  influence,  the 
more  do  they  regard  with  wonder  that  towering  figure  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  who  kindled  the  light  in  an  era  of  spiritual  darkness. 

—  Gertrude  van  Pelt,  m.  d. 

Her  writings  reveal  her  soul.  Profoundly  helpful,  with  compassion 
for  all  that  breathes,  spiritually  upHfting  and  intellectually  illuminating, 
they  reflect  her  high  intelligence,  nobility  of  character,  and  love  of  hu- 
manity. They  attract  those  who  would  lead  better  lives,  and  who  would 
learn  how  to  promote  the  brotherhood  of  man.  Her  life  was  in  accord 
with  her  teachings,  pure,  unselfish,  and  generous.  Her  work  has  succeeded; 
the  nucleus  of  the  Universal  Brotherhood  of  Humanity  has  been  es- 
tablished on  lines  she  outlined,  the  only  ones  that  could  succeed,  on  the 
basis  of  the  Divinity  of  Man.  The  'Ancient  Landmarks'  have  been 
recovered. —  Charles  J.  Ryan 

A  LOVING  and  loyal  tribute  to  Helena  P.  Blavatsky,  the  World  Teacher 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  who  restored  to  man  the  knowledge  of  his 
divine  origin  and  of  the  glorious  ancient  past;  who  pointed  him  to  a  path 
of  spiritual  effort  worthy  the  godlike  nature;  and  who,  in  her  writings, 
left  a  lamp  of  wisdom  to  guide  him  upon  the  way. 

The  radiance  of  this  Diamond  Soul  is  reaching  the  heart-hfe  of  the 
world;  the  mighty  fearlessness  of  her  devotion  is  rending  the  veils  that 
hid  the  oneness  of  Truth;  her  sublime  compassion  shall  yet  be  the  ideal 
of  men  of  every  race  and  age  to  come;  the  clarion  challenge  of  her  selfless 


TRIBUTES   BY   STUDENTS  41 

life  echoes  around  the  world  and  calls  men  to  true  conceptions  of  the  unity 
and  purpose  in  the  destiny  of  humanity. —  Marjorie  M.  Tyberg 

Bright  flame  of  pure  compassion,  warrior  tried  and  true,  once  more  we 
hail  you  as  the  rolling  years  recall  your  pioneer  endeavors  for  the  Race. 

Mere  wordy  eloquence  or  flowery  praise  is  valueless  in  your  discriminat- 
ing gaze,  nor  would  we  offer  verbal  homage  in  the  place  of  dedicated  lives. 
Rather  we  give  ourselves  anew  to  that  great  enterprise  in  which  for  many 
lives  you  have  poured  forth  your  energies.  Shoulder  to  shoulder  will  we 
march,  casting  aside  the  petty  hindrances  retarding  our  advance,  and 
with  a  concentrated  adamantine  will,  resolved  to  blend  our  separated  lives 
in  that  great  river  of  devoted  force  in  which  all  lofty  souls  are  merged. 

—  H.   P.   Leonard 

"She  has  no  need  of  any  man's  praise;  but  even  she  has  need  of  Justice." —  William  Q.  Judge 

For  the  courage  of  your  world-wide  Mystic  Quest  to  find  God  and 
the  Soul  in  man;  for  your  loyalty  to  the  mighty  perished  past  which  you 
made  live  again ;  for  your  revelation  of  man  to  himself  and  your  restora- 
tion of  his  birthright  of  Divinity;  for  your  compassionate  vindication  of 
the  rights  of  the  animal  world  whose  "long  hymn  of  suffering"  smote  your 
heart;  for  the  Divine,  Immortal  Wisdom  of  your  imperial  books,  and 
your  example  as  a  woman  and  a  Soul: 

For  these  and  more  than  these  we  pay  you  tribute,  "H.  P.  B.,"  as 
one  who  "being  dead,  yet  speaketh." — Grace  Knoche 

"For  a  good  treebringeth  not  forth  evil  fruit,  neither  doth  a  corrupt  tree  bring  forth  good  fruit." 

"My  own  principle  has  ever  been  to  make  the  Light  of  Truth  the 
beacon  of  my  Hfe,"  wrote  Mme.  Blavatsky.  In  all  her  voluminous 
writings,  not  once  does  she  offend  the  moral  sense.  She  taught  the  highest 
morality,  love  of  truth,  purity  of  life,  service  of  humanity;  of  these  her 
own  life  was  a  shining  example.  Attacks  against  her  are  but  signs  of  the 
vigorous  strength  of  Theosophy.  Men  attack  only  that  which  they  fear; 
they  who  love  darkness  ever  hate  the  light.  Her  glorious  teachings  and 
the  work  of  her  successors,  William  Q.  Judge  and  Katherine  Tingley, 
are  a  complete  refutation  of  all  the  calumnies  uttered  against  her. 

I  became  a  member  of  the  original  Theosophical  Society  in  1890, 
six  months  before  Mme.  Blavatsky's  death,  and  since  1892  have  been 
actively  engaged  in  Theosophical  work.  My  gratitude  and  devotion  to 
H.  P.  Blavatsky  and  my  reverence  for  her  have  grown  with  the  passing 
years.     For  me  she  stands  as  one  of  the  Great  Teachers  of  the  ages. 

—  Joseph  H.  Fussell 


42  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

H.  P.  Blavatsky's  life  and  her  work  were  essentially  prophetic.  In 
her  own  make-up  she  was  a  living  example  of  a  stage  of  development 
which,  compared  with  the  average  human  being,  mad^  her  teachings  of 
human  perfectibility  seem  not  only  possible  but  natural.  She  exemplified 
the  character  of  one  who  had  consciously  traveled  farther  along  the  path 
of  destiny  than  her  fellow-men.  Her  knowledge  of  life  and  of  natural 
laws  was  the  undoubted  heritage  of  ages  of  past  experience,  which 
nothing  but  reincarnation  could  account  for.  Her  selflessness  and  tireless 
energy  in  laboring  to  restore  the  ancient  truths  to  the  world,  showed  how 
truly  brotherhood  is  a  fact  in  nature,  and  that  the  tie  is  founded  in  the 
unity  which  originates  in  man's  birthright  of  divinity.  In  an  age  steeped 
and  blinded  at  the  lowest  point  of  a  densely  materialistic  cycle,  she  showed 
how  one  could  overcome  the  illusions  of  matter  by  self-conquest,  and  could 
travel  along  the  upward  arc  of  the  cycle. 

Her  teachings,  touching  life  at  every  point,  foretold  the  inevitable 
changing  and  crumbling  of  the  foundations  of  institutions  which  were 
confidently  regarded  as  secure  and  promising.  The  vexed  and  seemingly 
unrelated  problems  of  the  industrial,  educational,  rehgious,  and  social 
worlds  she  synthesized  and  harmonized  into  the  single  question  of  man's 
progressive  growth  and  self-development.  She  explained  how,  instead 
of  the  individual  being  lost  in  the  general  racial  advance,  the  law  of  karma 
restored  to  him  his  just  due,  life  after  life. 

Madame  Blavatsky  warned  the  nations  of  the  disasters  which  to  the 
average  mind  seem  to  have  fallen  out  of  a  clear  sky.  But  in  pointing  out 
the  karmic  effects  of  ages  of  unbrotherliness,— which  are  expressed  in  the 
terrible  war  and  its  aftermath  —  she  no  less  confidently  predicted  the 
uprising  of  a  great  spiritual  wave,  such  as  this  humanity  had  not  yet  known. 
When  her  heroic  soul  had  worn  out  its  body,  she  left  her  work  of  hope  and 
inspiration  in  the  hands  of  a  worthy  successor,  William  Q.  Judge. 

—  Lydia  Ross,  m.  d. 


"Others  abide  our  question;    thou  art   free." 

She  sowed  the  fields  of  thought  with  poetry,  aspiration,  faith  in  the 
divine  order  of  things.  She  made  spiritual  thinking  possible.  Her  fiery 
energies,  her  dynamic  strength  of  will,  heart,  intellect,  allowed  none  to 
remain  indifferent:  here  was  one  out  of  the  Heroic  Age,  who  challenged 
all  souls.  The  ethics  of  the  Christs  and  Buddhas,  grown  faint  with  time, 
she  wrote  anew  in  letters  of  fire;  and  reinforced  with  a  majestic  and  irre- 
futable philosophy.  No  Great  Soul  appears,  but  sets  the  kennels  of 
malignity  yapping  and  snarling:  for  the  attacks  that  were  made  on  her, 
it  is  enough  to  say  that  they  are  lies. —  Kenneth  Morris 


DONATED  BY 
KATHERiNE  TINGLEV 


TRIBUTES  TO 

HELENA     PETROVNA     BLAVATSKY* 

By  Some  of  her  Students 

IN  the  hearts  of  those  who  are  endeavoring  to  make  Theosophy  a  real 
factor  in  their  hves,  there  must  remain  an  overwhelming  sense  of 
gratitude  to  her  who  has  inspired  them  with  the  will  to  do  so;  and 
this  sense  of  gratitude,  love  and  respect  will  never  be  content  until  it  can 
find  fit  expression.  No  material  memorial,  nothing  that  money  can  pur- 
chase, will  ever  be  judged  a  sufficient  tribute  to  her  memory.  There  is 
but  one  way  in  which  the  debt  can  be  paid  and  that  is  by  making  the 
Theosophical  Society  a  world-wide  success  and  Theosophy  known  through- 
out the  whole  globe.  The  work  to  be  done  is  one  not  only  of  head  and 
hands  but  also  of  heart,  the  well-spring  of  all  right  actions  and  the  real 
magnet-point  of  our  humanity.  The  tremendous  burden  of  responsibiUty 
that  lay  so  heavily  on  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  but  which  she  so  gladly  bore  for 
the  Society,  must  now  be  shared  among  ourselves.  No  longer  can  H.  P. 
Blavatsky  stand  as  a  'buffer,'  as  she  herself  phrased  it,  to  the  Society 
and  be  the  scapegoat  of  all  its  shortcomings.  While  she  lived,  every 
mistake  and  wrong-doing  of  those  who  surrounded  her  were  set  down  to 
Mme.  Blavatsky  and  she  had  to  bear  the  blame  for  all.  This  is  now  no 
longer  possible.  The  Theosophical  Society  and  each  of  its  members  must 
stand  upon  their  own  merits,  and  the  day  of  vicarious  atonement  is  past. 
If  the  world  is  to  respect  Theosophy,  we  must  make  it  first  of  all  respect 
the  Theosophical  Society,  both  for  its  labors  for  others  and  for  the  im- 
mediate good  it  does  to  those  who  come  within  its  pale.  We  must  teach 
and  exemplify:  teach  what  Theosophy  is  in  plain  and  simple  words,  and 
exemplify  its  redeeming  power  by  our  right  conduct  in  all  the  affairs  of  life. 

—  G.  R.  S.  Mead,  F.  T.  S. 

What  phenomenon  could  well  be  greater  than  the  production  of 
Mme.  Blavatsky's  monumental  works,  in  a  language  and  country  foreign 
to  her,  unless  it  were  the  union  in  one  individual  of  such  great  knowledge, 
such  spiritual  wealth,  with  so  much  geniality  and  consideration  for  the 
meanest  brother  or  sister  who  showed  aspiration  for  truth  or  goodness, 
so  much  sympathy  and  ready  help  in  difficulties  of  every  kind,  material 
as  well  as  psychical  and  spiritual. 

*Extracts  from  Tributes  published  in  1891,  shortly  after  Mme.  Blavatsky's  death. 


44  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

Each  can  only  speak  as  he  or  she  has  been  personally  affected;  and 
such  egotism,  if  egotism  it  be,  is  but  a  triumphant  verdict  in  favor  of  her 
we  fain  would  honor,  whose  greatest  glory  was  the  number  of  hearts  and 
minds  she  won  for  the  pursuit  of  truth  and  virtue. 

—  Emily   Kislingbury 

the  opinion  of  a  hindu  about  h.  p.  blavatsky 

Those  who  call  Mme.  Blavatsky  *a  fraud'  are  much  mistaken,  they 
do  not  know  her.  I  would  be  glad  to  give  up  everything  I  have  in  this 
world  to  become  such  a  fraud,  if  anybody  will  come  forward  to  teach  me. 
Is  it  not  sufficient  for  the  Westerns  to  know  that  a  proud  Brahman,  who 
knows  not  how  to  bend  his  body  before  any  mortal  being  in  this  world, 
except  his  superiors  in  relation  or  religion,  joins  his  hands  like  a  submissive 
child  before  the  white  Yogint  of  the  West?  —  Rai  B.  K.  Laheri,  F.  T.  S. 

how    AN    AGNOSTIC    SAW    HER 

She  was  neither  pessimist  nor  misanthropist.  She  was  simply  an 
upright  and  romantically  honest  giantess,  who  measured  herself  with  the 
men  and  women  with  whom  she  came  in  contact,  and  felt  the  contrast, 
and  was  not  hypocrite  enough  to  pretend  she  did  not  feel  it.  But  she 
did  not  call  even  those  who  reviled  and  wronged  her  by  a  more  bitter 
epithet  than  'flap-doodles.'  Such  assailants  as  even  the  Coulombs  and 
Dr.  Coues  she  referred  to  with  expressions  equivalent  to  "Father,  forgive 
them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do,"  even  when  these  assailants  were 
doing  their  best  to  cut  her,  soul  and  body,  with  numerous  and  ghastly 
wounds,  and  to  fill  them  with  salt  and  salve  them  with  vitriol. 

Theosophy  or  no  Theosophy,  the  most  extraordinary  woman  of  our 
century,  or  of  any  century,  has  passed  away.  Yesterday  the  world  had 
one  Madame  Blavatsky  —  today  it  has  none.  The  matrix  of  hereditary 
environment  in  which  she  was  molded  has  been  broken.  Through  the 
coming  ages  of  time  or  eternity  shall  the  shattered  fragments  of  that 
matrix  be  gathered  up  and  refixed,  and  another  Helena  Petrovna  Hahn 
be  born  upon  the  earth,  when  the  earth  is  sane  enough  not  to  misunder- 
stand her,  to  persecute  her,  and  seek  to  bury  her  name  in  a  cataclysm  of 
falsehood,  hatred,  and  slander?  —  Saladin   (In  Agnostic  Journal) 

To  all  who  assisted  her  work  she  was  ever  ready  to  give  counsel  and 
help,  and  only  those  who  received  her  help  can  appreciate  it  at  its  just 
value.  But  though  they  feel  it,  they  cannot  talk  of  it,  for  it  is  not  possible 
to  bring  the  deepest  feelings  to  the  surface.  Personally,  as  I  know  her, 
I  may  say  that  I  found  in  her  the  wise  teacher,  the  loving  friend  who  knew 


TRIBUTES  BY   STUDENTS  45 

how  to  cut  for  the  purpose  of  curing,  and  an  example  in  practice  when  the 
need  arose  of  how  to  regulate  action  to  theosophical  ideas.  I  may  close 
by  saying  that  I  regard  myself  as  most  fortunate  in  the  Karma  which 
brought  me  in  association  with  H.  P.  Blavatsky  and  enabled  me  to  assist 
so  far  as  I  could  in  the  work  of  the  lion-hearted  leader  of  the  Cause  of 
Theosophy.—  Arch.  Keightley,  m.  d.,  F.  T.  S. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  there  ever  was  any  great  genius  and  savior  of 
mankind,  whose  personality  while  upon  this  earth  was  not  misunderstood 
by  his  friends,  reviled  by  his  enemies,  mentally  tortured  and  crucified,  and 
finally  made  an  object  of  fetish-worship  by  subsequent  generations. 
H.  P.  Blavatsky  seems  to  be  no  exception  to  the  rule.  The  world,  dazzled 
by  the  light  of  her  doctrines,  which  the  majority  of  men  did  not  grasp, 
because  they  were  new  to  them,  looked  upon  her  with  distrust,  and  the 
representatives  of  scientific  ignorance,  filled  with  their  own  pomposity, 
pronounced  her  to  be  'the  greatest  impostor  of  the  age,'  because  their 
narrow  minds  could  not  rise  up  to  a  comprehension  of  the  magnificence 
of  her  spirit.  It  is,  however,  not  difficult  to  prophesy,  that  in  the  near 
future,  when  the  names  of  her  enemies  will  have  been  forgotten,  the 
world  will  become  alive  to  a  realization  of  the  true  nature  of  the  mission 
of  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  and  see  that  she  was  a  messenger  of  Light,  sent  to 
instruct  this  sinful  world,  to  redeem  it  from  ignorance,  folly  and  super- 
stition, a  task  which  she  has  fulfilled  as  far  as  her  voice  was  heard  and 
her  teachings  accepted.  .  .  . 

In  caUing  her  '  the  greatest  impostor  of  the  age '  the  agent  of  the  Society 
for  Psychical  Research,  who  presented  her  with  that  title,  merely  certified 
to  his  own  incapacity  to  judge  about  character,  for  H.  P.  Blavatsky  —  as 
all  who  were  acquainted  with  her  will  testify  —  was  never  capable  of 
disguising  herself,  and  any  imposture,  great  or  little,  which  she  could  have 
attempted,  would  have  immediately  been  found  out,  even  by  a  child. 
Mme.  Blavatsky  was  in  possession  of  that  in  which  most  of  her  critics 
are  sadly  deficient,  namely,  soul- htoiv ledge,  a  department  of  'science'  not 
yet  discovered  by  modern  scientists  and  would-be  philosophers.  The 
soul  that  Hved  in  her  was  a  great  soul.  This  great  soul,  and  not  the  dress 
which  she  used  to  wear,  should  be  the  object  of  our  investigation,  not 
for  the  purpose  of  gratifying  scientific  curiosity  —  but  for  profiting  by 
the  example. —  Franz  Hartmann,  m.  d. 

How  keenly  she  felt  the  shameful  attacks  upon  her  character  we  who 
knew  her  well,  realized  and  regretted;  and  I  often  tried  to  reason  her  into 
a  feeling  of  indifference  for  the  opinions  of  those  who  knew  nothing  of  her 


46  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

except  what  they  gathered  from  garbled  and  prejudiced  accounts  in 
newspapers.  But  although  she  personally  felt  these  slanders,  a  large  part 
of  her  suffering  arose  from  a  fear  that  the  Cause  which  she  had  at  heart, 
and  for  which  she  worked  as  I  have  never  seen  anyone  else  work  in  any 
other  cause,  would  be  injured  by  the  calumnies  against  her.  I  always  felt 
astonished  at  the  untiring  energy  which  she  displayed;  even  when  ill  she 
would  still  struggle  to  her  writing-table  and  go  on  working.  It  fills  one 
with  contempt  and  anger  to  think  that  even  when  she  was  beyond  the 
reach  of  slander  some  of  the  papers  degraded  their  pages  with  abuse,  and 
republished  the  falsehoods  which  have  found  credulous  audience  among  a 
class  who  pride  themselves  on  their  incredulity.  .  .  . 

Still  to  show  that  I  had  ample  opportunities  for  knowing  her  well, 
I  will  mention  that  during  both  her  visits  to  Simla  I  saw  her  almost  daily, 
in  fact  I  was  in  the  same  house  for  three  months,  in  and  out  of  her  room 
at  any  and  all  times  of  the  day.  She  was  always  affectionate  towards  me, 
and  I  had  a  real  affection  for  her,  and  shall  always,  as  hitherto,  defend  her 
before  the  world.  And  we  who  know  what  a  wonderful  woman  she  was, 
and  how  interesting  and  profound  is  the  philosophy  which  she  has  brought 
prominently  forward,  know  also  that  a  day  will  come  when  the  world  will 
acknowledge  her  greatness,  and  will  realize  that  we  who  defend  and  rever- 
ence her  memory  are  not  such  foolish  and  gullible  people  as  the  conceited 
and  usually  ignorant  public  of  today  assume. —  Alice  Gordon,  F.  T.  S. 

WHAT    SHE    TAUGHT    US 

If  I  were  to  write  this  short  memoir  simply  as  an  imperfect  expression 
of  what  H.  P.  Blavatsky  was  to  me  personally,  and  of  the  influence  of  her 
life  and  teachings  upon  my  own  life  and  aspirations,  I  should  merely  be 
adding  one  more  testimony  to  that  affection  and  reverence  which  she 
inspired  in  all  who  learnt  to  understand  her  in  some  degree.  There  were 
those  who  were  attracted  to  her  by  the  magnetism  of  her  personal  influence, 
by  her  extraordinary  intellect,  by  her  conversational  powers,  and  even  by 
her  militant  unconventionality.  But  I  was  not  one  of  these.  It  was  her 
message  that  attracted  me;  it  was  as  a  teacher  that  I  learnt  to  know  and 
love  her.  Apart  from  her  teachings  I  might  have  looked  upon  Mme. 
Blavatsky  as  an  interesting  and  unique  character,  but  I  do  not  think 
I  should  have  been  attracted  to  her,  had  not  her  message  spoken  at  once 
right  home  to  my  heart.  It  was  through  that  message  that  I  came  to 
know  her,  not  as  a  mere  personal  friend,  but  as  something  infinitely  more. 

Let  me  dwell  therefore  upon  Mme.  Blavatsky  as  a  teacher,  let  me 
endeavor  to  express  what  it  was  that  she  set  before  me,  and  before  so 
many  others,  the  acceptance  of  which  united  us  by  ties  which  death 
cannot  sever. 


TRIBUTES  BY   STUDENTS  47 

First,  and  above  all  else,  she  showed  us  the  purpose  of  life.  And  when 
I  say  this  I  mean  much  more  than  might  be  commonly  understood  by  this 
phrase.  I  mean  much  more  than  that  she  gave  us  an  interest  and  a  motive 
in  this  present  life,  and  a  belief  or  faith  with  regard  to  the  next.  Those 
who  have  learnt  the  lesson  of  the  illusory  nature  of  that  which  most  men 
call  life,  whether  here  or  hereafter,  need  to  draw  their  inspiration  from  a 
deeper  source  than  is  available  in  the  external  world  of  forms.  .  .  . 

And  thus  she  did  something  more  than  teach  us  a  new  system  of 
philosophy.  She  drew  together  the  threads  of  our  life,  those  threads  which 
run  back  into  the  past,  and  forward  into  the  future,  but  which  we  had 
been  unable  to  trace,  and  showed  us  the  pattern  we  had  been  weaving 
and  the  purpose  of  our  work. 

She  taught  us  Theosophy  —  not  as  a  mere  form  of  doctrine,  not  as  a 
religion,  or  a  philosophy,  or  a  creed,  or  a  working  hypothesis,  but  as 
a  living  power  in  our  lives. 

It  is  inevitable  that  the  term  Theosophy  should  come  to  be  associated 
with  a  certain  set  of  doctrines.  In  order  that  the  message  may  be  given 
to  the  world  it  must  be  presented  in  a  definite  and  systematic  form.  But 
in  doing  this  it  becomes  exoteric,  and  nothing  that  is  exoteric  can  be  per- 
manent, for  it  belongs  to  the  world  of  form.  She  led  us  to  look  beneath 
the  surface,  behind  the  form ;  to  make  the  principle  the  real  motive  power 
of  our  life  and  conduct.  To  her  the  term  Theosophy  meant  something 
infinitely  more  than  could  be  set  before  the  world  in  any  Key  to  Theosophy, 
or  Secret  Doctrine.  The  nearest  approach  to  it  in  any  of  her  published 
works  is  in  The  Voice  of  the  Silence;  yet  even  that  conveys  but  imperfectly 
what  she  would  —  had  the  world  been  able  to  receive  it  —  have  taught 
and  included  in  the  term  Theosophy.  .  .  . 

Individualism  is  the  keynote  of  modern  civiUzation;  competition  and 
survival  of  the  fittest,  the  practical  basis  of  our  morality.  Our  modern 
philosophers  and  scientific  teachers  do  all  that  is  possible  to  reduce  man 
to  the  level  of  an  animal,  to  show  his  parentage,  his  ancestry  and  his 
genius  as  belonging  to  the  brute  creation,  and  conditioned  by  brutal  laws 
of  blind  force  and  dead  matter.  What  wonder  then  that  one  who  beheved 
so  ardently  in  the  divine  nature  of  man,  in  the  divine  law  of  love,  should 
oppose  with  scornful  contempt  the  teachings  of  both  religion  and  science 
which  thus  degrade  humanity. 

And  she  paid  the  inevitable  penalty.  Misunderstood,  slandered,  and 
vilified  to  the  last  degree,  she  lived  a  hero's  fife,  and  died  a  martyr's  death. 
Only  those  who  were  her  intimate  friends  knew  how  she  suffered,  mentally 
and  bodily.  The  man  who  dies  with  his  face  to  the  foe,  fighting  to  the  last 
though  covered  with  wounds,  is  accounted  a  hero.  But  in  the  heat  of 
battle  there  is  oblivion  of  pain,  there  is  a  superhuman  strength  of  madness 


48  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

and  frenzy.  How  much  more  should  she  be  accounted  a  hero  who  could 
hold  on  to  life,  and  work  as  no  other  woman  has  worked,  through  years 
of  physical  and  mental  torture.  .  .  . 

She  chose  the  cross.  And  thus  not  merely  did  she  teach  us  the  meaning 
of  Theosophy  by  precept,  but  also  by  example.  She  was  herself  the  great- 
est of  the  Theosophists,  not  merely  because  she  founded  the  movemnet, 
and  restored  to  the  world  the  treasures  of  ancient  wisdom,  but  because 
she  herself  had  made  the  ''Great  Renunciation. '' 

—  William  Kingsland,  F.  T.  S. 

from  india 

"Gone   is   the   glory    from    the   grass, 
And  splendor  from  the  flower!" 

Helena  Petrovna  Blavatsky  has  ceased  to  exist  on  this  earthly 
plane.  She  is  gone  from  among  us.  Madame  Blavatsky's  death  is  a  blow 
to  all  the  world.  She  was  not  of  this  nation  or  that.  The  wide  earth  was 
her  home,  and  all  mankind  were  her  brothers,  and  these  brothers  are  now 
plunged  in  mourning  for  the  loss  of  a  priceless  sister.  .  .  . 

Madame  Blavatsky  was  decidedly  the  most  remarkable  person  that 
this  age  has  produced.  The  whole  of  her  life  was  simply  extraordinary. 
There  is  no  existing  human  standard  by  which  to  judge  her.  She  will 
always  stand  out  alone.  There  was  only  one  Madame  Blavatsky,  there 
never  will  be  any  other.  It  was  always  difficult  to  understand  her  at  all 
points,  she  was  often  the  greatest  puzzle  to  her  most  intimate  friends,  and 
the  mystery  of  her  Hfe  is  yet  only  partly  revealed. —  Babula 

from    SPAIN 

Every  time  I  saw  Mme.  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  my  affection,  loyalty  and 
admiration  for  her  increased.  To  her  I  owe  all  that  I  know,  for  both 
mental  tranquility  and  moral  equilibrium  were  attained  on  making  her 
acquaintance.  She  gave  me  hope  for  the  future;  she  inspired  me  with 
her  own  noble  and  devoted  principles,  and  transformed  my  everyday 
existence  by  holding  up  a  high  ideal  of  life  for  attainment;  the  ideal 
being  the  chief  object  of  the  Theosophical  Society,  /.  e.,  to  work  for  the 
good  and  well-being  of  humanity. 

Her  death  was  a  bitter  grief  to  me,  as  to  all  those  who  are  working 
for  the  common  cause,  Theosophy,  and  who  having  known  her  personally, 
have  contracted  a  debt  of  undying  gratitude  towards  her. 

I  have  lost  my  Friend  and  Teacher,  who  purified  my  life,  who  gave  me 
back  my  faith  in  Humanity,  and  in  her  admirable  example  of  courage, 
self-sacrifice,  and  disinterestedness,  and  virtue,  I  shall  find  the  strength 


TRIBUTES  BY  STUDENTS  49 

and  courage  necessary  for  working  for  that  cause  which  we  are  all  bound 
to  defend. 

May  her  memory  be  blessed! 

These,  dear  brethren  and  friends,  are  the  few  words  which  I  wished 
to  say  to  you,  greatly  desiring  to  declare  before  you  all  that  I  shall  never 
forget  what  I  owe  to  H.  P.  Blavatsky. 

Let  enemies  and  materialists  explain,  if  they  can,  the  power  and 
attraction  of  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  and  if  they  cannot,  let  them  be  silent. 

The  tree  will  be  known  by  its  fruits,  as  actions  will  be  judged  and 
valued  by  their  results. —  Jose  Xifre 

H.    p.    BLAVATSKY    AND    "THE    SECRET    DOCTRINE" 

"Who  am  I,"  she  said,  answering  one  question  with  another,  "who 
am  I  that  I  should  deny  a  chance  to  one  in  whom  I  see  a  spark  still  glim- 
mering of  recognition  of  the  Cause  I  serve  that  might  yet  be  fanned  into 
a  flame  of  devotion?  What  matter  the  consequences  that  fall  on  me 
personally  when  such  an  one  fails,  succumbing  to  the  forces  of  evil  within 
him  — ■  deception,  ingratitude,  revenge,  what  not  —  forces  that  I  saw  as 
clearly  as  I  saw  the  hopeful  spark:  though  in  his  fall  he  cover  me  with 
misrepresentation,  obloquy  and  scorn?  What  right  have  I  to  refuse  to 
any  one  the  chance  of  profiting  by  the  truths  I  can  teach  him,  and  there- 
by entering  upon  the  Path?  I  tell  you  that  I  have  no  choice.  I  am 
pledged  by  the  strictest  rules  and  laws  of  occultism  to  a  renunciation  of 
selfish  considerations,  and  how  can  I  dare  to  assume  the  existence  of 
faults  in  a  candidate  and  act  upon  my  assumption  even  though  a  cloud 
may  fill  me  with  misgivings?"  .  .  . 

At  this  time  I  learned  little  more  concerning  The  Secret  Doctrine  than 
that  it  was  to  be  a  work  far  more  voluminous  than  Isis  Unveiled,  and 
that  it  would  give  out  to  the  world  as  much  of  the  esoteric  doctrine  as 
was  possible  at  the  present  stage  of  human  evolution.  "  It  will,  of  course, 
be  very  fragmentary,"  she  said,  "and  there  will  of  necessity  be  great 
gaps  left,  but  it  will  make  men  think,  and  as  soon  as  they  are  ready  more 
will  be  given  out."  "But,"  she  added  after  a  pause,  "that  will  not  be 
until  the  next  century,  when  men  will  begin  to  understand  and  discuss 
this  book  intelligently."  .  .  . 

Incidents,  such  as  this  [referring  to  one  who  had  come  to  her,  asking 
for  help,  but  later  turned  against  her],  of  ingratitude  and  desertion, 
affected  Mme.  Blavatsky  most  painfully.  I  mention  it  here  to  show  an 
example  of  the  mental  distress  which,  added  to  physical  maladies  and 
weakness,  rendered  progress  with  her  task  slow  and  painful. 

Her  quiet  studious  life  continued  for  some  little  time,  and  the  work 
progressed  steadily,  until,  one  morning,  a  thunderbolt  descended  upon  us. 


50  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

By  the  early  post,  without  a  word  of  warning,  Mme.  Blavatsky  received 
a  copy  of  the  well-known  Report  of  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research. 
It  was  a  cruel  blow,  and,  in  the  form  it  took,  wholly  unexpected.  I  shall 
never  forget  that  day  nor  the  look  of  blank  and  stony  despair  that  she 
cast  on  me  when  I  entered  her  sitting-room  and  found  her  with  the  book 
open  in  her  hands. 

"This,"  she  cried,  "is  the  Karma  of  the  Theosophical  Society,  and  it 
falls  upon  me.  I  am  the  scapegoat.  I  am  made  to  bear  all  the  sins  of  the 
Society,  and  now  who  will  hsten  to  me  or  read  The  Secret  Doctrine?  How 
can  I  carry  on  my  work  for  Humanity?  ..." 

Her  sensitive  nature  was  too  deeply  wounded,  her  indignation  at 
unmerited  wrong  too  strongly  stirred,  to  listen  at  first  to  counsels  of 
patience  and  moderation.  Nothing  would  serve  but  she  must  start  for 
London  at  once  and  annihilate  her  enemies  with  the  truth.  Every  post 
only  increased  her  anger  and  despair,  and  for  a  long  time  no  useful  work 
could  be  done.  She  recognised  at  last  that  for  her  there  was  no  hope  or 
remedy  in  legal  proceedings  in  this  country  any  more  than  in  India. 
This  is  proved  by  a  passage  from  a  "Protest"  which  she  contributed  to 
Mr.  Sinnett's  reply  to  the  Report  entitled  "  'Occult  World  Phenomena' 
and  the  Society  for  Psychical  Research,"  and  which  I  will  quote. 

"Mr.  Hodgson  [the  agent  of  the  Psychical  Research  Society  and  author  of  the  P.  R.  S. 
report]  knows,"  she  wrote,  "and  the  Committee  doubtless  share  his  knowledge,  that  he  is 
safe  from  actions  for  libel  at  my  hands,  because  I  have  no  money  to  conduct  costly  proceedings 
against  him."  .  .  . 

To  conclude  this  episode  I  may  perhaps  be  permitted  to  quote  a  letter 
of  my  own,  addressed  to : 

"From  a  worldly  point  of  view  Madame  Blavatsky  is  an  unhappy  woman,  slandered, 
doubted,  and  abused  by  many;  but,  looked  at  from  a  higher  point  of  view,  she  has  extra- 
ordinary gifts,  and  no  amount  of  vilification  can  deprive  her  of  the  privileges  which  she  enjoys. 

"On  account  of  the  extensive  knowledge  which  she  possesses,  and  which  extends  far  into 
the  invisible  part  of  nature,  it  is  very  much  to  be  regretted  that  all  her  troubles  and  trials 
prevent  her  giving  to  the  world  a  great  deal  of  information,  which  she  would  be  willing  to 
impart  if  she  were  permitted  to  remain  undisturbed  and  in  peace. 

"Even  the  great  work  in  which  she  is  now  engaged,  The  Secret  Doctrine,  has  been  greatly 
impeded  by  all  this  persecution.  ..." 

In  the  following  year  [1888]  another  account  appeared  in  The  Theo- 
sophist  for  July,  which  may  also  be  of  interest  to  my  readers: 

"Madame  Blavatsky  continues  to  labor  as  ceaselessly  as  ever,  and  under  conditions  of  such 
physical  disability  as  render  not  simply  her  working,  but  actually  her  living  truly  marvelous. 
I  may  say  as  a  physician  and  not  simply  upon  my  own  authority,  but  as  a  fact  known  to  some 
of  the  leading  medical  practitioners  of  London,  that  never  before  has  a  patient  been  known  to 
live  even  for  a  week  under  such  conditions  of  renal  disorder  as  have  been  chronic  with  her  for 
very  many  months  past.  Lately  they  have  been  somewhat  modified  by  the  action  of  strychnia, 
of  which  she  has  taken  a  little  over  six  grains  daily.  Very  frequently  she  has  attacks  of  cerebral 
apoplexy,  but  without  any  treatment  known  to  medical  science  wards  them  off  and  goes  on, 


TRIBUTES  BY  STUDENTS  51 

firmly  confident  as  ever  that  her  present  life  will  not  end  before  its  work  is  fully  accomplished. 
And  in  that  work  she  is  indefatiKable.  Her  hours  of  labor  are  daily  from  6:30  a.  m.  to  7  p.  m., 
w'ith  only  a  few  minutes'  interruption  for  a  lij!;ht  meal  just  before  the  sun  reaches  the  meridian. 
During  that  time  she  devotes  a  great  deal  of  her  time  to  preparing  the  instructions  for  the 
Esoteric  Section,  giving  out  such  knowledge  as  is  permitted  her  to  impart  and  its  members  are 
capable  of  receiving.  Then  the  editorial  labor  connected  with  the  production  of  her  magazine 
Lucifer  devolves  entirely  upon  her.  And  she  also  edits  the  new  French  Theosophical  monthly 
magazine  La  Revue  Theosophique,  published  by  the  Countess  d'Adhemar,  who,  by  the  way,  is 
an  American  by  birth.  Her  magazine  is  now  publishing  a  series  of  brilliant  articles  by  Amara- 
vella,  and  a  translation  in  French  of  Madame  Blavatsky's  Secret  Doctrine.  .  .  . 

"  In  the  evening,  from  7  until  11  o'clock,  and  sometimes  2  o'clock  a.  m.,  Madame  Blavatsky 
receives  visitors,  of  whom  she  has  many.  Of  course  many  are  friends,  others  are  serious  in- 
vestigators, and  not  a  few  are  impelled  by  curiosity  to  see  a  woman  who  is  one  of  the  prominent 
personages  of  the  world  today.  All  are  welcome,  and  she  is  equally  ready  in  meeting  all  upon 
any  ground  they  select. 

"Mr.  G.  J.  Romanes,  a  Fellow  of  the  Royal  Society,  comes  in  to  discuss  the  evolutionary 
theory  set  forth  in  her  Secret  Doctrine;  Mr.  W.  T.  Stead,  editor  of  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  who 
is  a  great  admirer  of  The  Secret  Doctrine,  finds  much  in  it  that  seems  to  invite  further  elucida- 
tion; Lord  Crawford,  Earl  of  Crawford  and  Balcarres,  another  F.  R.  S.  —  who  is  deeply  in- 
terested in  Occultism  and  Cosmogony,  and  who  was  a  pupil  of  Lord  Lytton  and  studied  with 
him  in  Egypt  —  comes  to  speak  of  his  special  subjects  of  concern;  Mr.  Sidney  Whitman, 
widely  known  by  his  scathing  criticism  upon  EngHsh  cant,  has  ideas  to  express  and  thoughts 
to  interchange  upon  the  ethics  of  Theosophy,  and  so  they  come." —  A.  K. 

To  return,  we  were  hardly  settled  in  the  house  before  people  began  to 
call  on  Madame  Blavatsky,  and  the  visitors  grew  so  numerous,  and  she 
was  so  constantly  interrupted  in  her  work,  that  it  was  considered  ad- 
visable for  her  to  have  a  day  for  reception.  Saturday  was  chosen,  and 
from  2  p.  m.  till  11  or  12  at  night  there  would  be  a  succession  of  visitors, 
and  Madame  Blavatsky  would  frequently  have  a  group  around  her  asking 
questions,  to  which  she  would  answer  with  unvarying  patience.  All  this 
time  The  Secret  Doctrine  was  being  continued,  until,  at  last,  it  was  put 
into  the  printer's  hands.  Then  began  the  task  of  proof-reading,  revising, 
and  correcting,  which  proved  to  be  a  very  onerous  one  indeed.  .  .  . 

But  The  Secret  Doctrine  finished,  my  task  is  done.  Let  me  only  add 
my  small  tribute  of  gratitude  and  love  to  the  friend  and  teacher  who  did 
more  for  me  than  anybody  in  the  world,  who  helped  to  show  me  the  truth, 
and  who  pointed  out  to  me  the  way  to  try  and  conquer  self,  with  all  its 
petty  weaknesses,  and  to  live  more  nobly  for  the  use  and  good  of  others. 
"Thy  soul  has  to  become  as  the  ripe  mango  fruit;  as  soft  and  sweet  as 
its  bright  golden  pulp  for  others'  woes,  as  hard  as  that  fruit's  stone  for 
thine  own  throes  and  sorrows."  .  .  .  "Compassion  speaks  and  saith: 
can  there  be  bliss  when  all  that  lives  must  suffer?  Shalt  thou  be  saved 
and  hear  the  whole  world  cry?"*  These  are  the  precepts  that  Madame 
Blavatsky  bade  her  pupils  learn  and  follow,  these  are  the  ethics  that  her 
life  of  continual  self-abnegation  for  the  good  of  others  has  set  like  a 
burning  flame  in  the  hearts  of  those  that  believed  in  her. —  Countess  W. 

*From  The  Voice  of  the  Silence. 


QUOTATIONS   FROM    THE    WRITINGS   OF 
HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

From  "Isis  Unveiled,"  published  in  1877 

THE  work  now  submitted  to  public  judgment  is  the  fruit  of  a  somewhat 
intimate  acquaintance  with  Eastern  adepts  and  study  of  their  science. 
It  is  offered  to  such  as  are  wilHng  to  accept  truth  wherever  it  may  be 
found,  and  to  defend  it,  even  looking  popular  prejudice  straight  in  the 
face.    It  is  an  attempt  to  aid  the  student  to  detect  the  vital  principles 
which  underlie  the  philosophical  systems  of  old. 

The  book  is  written  in  all  sincerity.  It  is  meant  to  do  even  justice, 
and  to  speak  the  truth  alike  without  mahce  or  prejudice.  But  it  shows 
neither  mercy  for  enthroned  error,  nor  reverence  for  usurped  authority. 
It  demands  for  a  spoliated  past,  that  credit  for  its  achievements  which 
has  been  too  long  withheld.  It  calls  for  a  restitution  of  borrowed  robes, 
and  the  vindication  of  calumniated  but  glorious  reputations.  Toward 
no  form  of  worship,  no  religious  faith,  no  scientific  hypothesis  has  its 
criticism  been  directed  in  any  other  spirit.  Men  and  parties,  sects  and 
schools,  are  but  the  mere  ephemera  of  the  world's  day.  Truth,  high- 
seated  upon  its  rock  of  adamant,  is  alone  eternal  and  supreme. 

—  Author's  Preface,  Vol.  I,  p.  v. 

Our  work,  then,  is  a  plea  for  the  recognition  of  the  Hermetic  philo- 
sophy, the  anciently  universal  Wisdom-Religion,  as  the  only  possible  key 
to  the  Absolute  in  science  and  theology. —  Author's  Preface,  Vol.  I,  p.  vii. 

A  man's  idea  of  God,  is  that  image  of  blinding  light  that  he  sees  re- 
flected in  the  concave  mirror  of  his  own  soul,  and  yet  this  is  not,  in  very 
truth,  God,  but  only  His  reflexion.  His  glory  is  there,  but,  it  is  the  light 
of  his  own  Spirit  that  the  man  sees,  and  it  is  all  he  can  bear  to  look  upon. 
The  clearer  the  mirror,  the  brighter  will  be  the  divine  image.  But  the  ex- 
ternal world  Cannot  be  witnessed  in  it  at  the  same  moment.  In  the 
ecstatic  Yogin,  in  the  illuminated  Seer,  the  spirit  will  shine  like  the  noon- 
day sun;  in  the  debased  victim  of  earthly  attraction,  the  radiance  has 
disappeared,  for  the  mirror  is  obscured  with  the  stains  of  matter.  Such 
men  deny  their  God,  and  would  willingly  deprive  humanity  of  soul  at 
one  blow. —  Before  the  Veil,  Vol.  I,  p.  xviii. 


QUOTATIONS  FROM   "ISIS  UNVEILED"  53 

Before  closing  this  initial  chapter,  we  venture  to  say  a  few  words  in 
explanation  of  the  plan  of  this  work.  Its  object  is  not  to  force  upon  the 
public  the  personal  views  or  theories  of  its  author;  nor  has  it  the  pre- 
tensions of  a  scientific  work,  which  aims  at  creating  a  revolution  in  some 
department  of  thought.  It  is  rather  a  brief  summary  of  the  religions, 
philosophies,  and  universal  traditions  of  human  kind,  and  the  exegesis 
of  the  same,  in  the  spirit  of  those  secret  doctrines,  of  which  none  — 
thanks  to  prejudice  and  bigotry  —  have  reached  Christendom  in  so  un- 
mutilated  a  form  as  to  secure  it  a  fair  judgment.  Since  the  days  of  the 
unlucky  medieval  philosophers,  the  last  to  write  upon  these  secret  doc- 
trines of  which  they  were  the  depositaries,  few  men  have  dared  to  brave 
persecution  and  prejudice  by  placing  their  knowledge  upon  record.  And 
these  few  have  never,  as  a  rule,  written  for  the  public,  but  only  for  those 
of  their  own  and  succeeding  times  who  possessed  the  key  to  their  jargon. 
The  multitude,  not  understanding  them  or  their  doctrines,  have  been  ac- 
customed to  regard  them  en  masse  as  either  charlatans  or  dreamers. 
Hence  the  unmerited  contempt  into  which  the  study  of  the  noblest  of 
sciences  —  that  of  the  spiritual  man  —  has  gradually  fallen. 

In  undertaking  to  inquire  into  the  assumed  infallibility  of  Modern 
Science  and  Theology,  the  author  has  been  forced,  even  at  the  risk  of 
being  thought  discursive,  to  make  constant  comparison  of  the  ideas, 
achievements,  and  pretensions  of  their  representatives,  with  those  of  the 
ancient  philosophers  and  religious  teachers.  Things  the  most  widely 
separated  as  to  time,  have  thus  been  brought  into  immediate  juxtaposi- 
tion, for  only  thus  could  the  priority  and  parentage  of  discoveries  and 
dogmas  be  determined.  In  discussing  the  merits  of  our  scientific  con- 
temporaries, their  own  confessions  of  failure  in  experimental  research,  of 
baffling  mysteries,  of  missing  links  in  their  chains  of  theory,  of  inability 
to  comprehend  natural  phenomena,  of  ignorance  of  the  laws  of  the  causal 
world,  have  furnished  the  basis  for  the  present  study.  Especially  (since 
Psychology  has  been  so  much  neglected,  and  the  East  is  so  far  away  that 
few  of  our  investigators  will  ever  get  there  to  study  that  science  where 
alone  it  is  understood),  we  shall  review  the  speculations  and  policy  of 
noted  authorities  in  connexion  with  those  modern  psychological  phe- 
nomena which  began  at  Rochester  and  have  now  overspread  the  world. 
We  wish  to  show  how  inevitable  were  their  innumerable  failures,  and  how 
they  must  continue  until  these  pretended  authorities  of  the  West  go  to  the 
Brdhmanas  and  Lamaists  of  the  far  Orient,  and  respectfully  ask  them  to 
impart  the  alphabet  of  true  science.  We  have  laid  no  charge  against  scientists 
that  is  not  supported  by  their  own  published  admissions,  and  if  our  cita- 
tions from  the  records  of  antiquity  rob  some  of  what  they  have  hitherto 
viewed  as  well-earned  laurels,  the  fault  is  not  ours  but  Truth's.    No  man 


54  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

worthy  of  the  name  of  philosopher  would  care  to  wear  honors  that  right- 
fully belong  to  another. 

Deeply  sensible  of  the  Titanic  struggle  that  is  now  in  progress  between 
materialism  and  the  spiritual  aspirations  of  mankind,  our  constant  en- 
deavor has  been  to  gather  into  our  several  chapters,  like  weapons  into 
armories,  every  fact  and  argument  that  can  be  used  to  aid  the  latter  in 
defeating  the  former.  Sickly  and  deformed  child  as  it  now  is,  the  material- 
ism of  Today  is  born  of  the  brutal  Yesterday.  Unless  its  growth  is 
arrested,  it  may  become  our  master.  It  is  the  bastard  progeny  of  the 
French  Revolution  and  its  reaction  against  ages  of  religious  bigotry  and 
repression.  To  prevent  the  crushing  of  these  spiritual  aspirations,  the 
blighting  of  these  hopes,  and  the  deadening  of  that  intuition  which  teaches 
us  of  a  God  and  a  hereafter,  we  must  show  our  false  theologies  in  their 
naked  deformity,  and  distinguish  between  divine  religion  and  human  dog- 
mas. Our  voice  is  raised  for  spiritual  freedom,  and  our  plea  made  for 
enfranchisement  from  all  tyranny,  whether  of  Science  or  Theology. 

—  Before  the  Veil,  Vol.  I,  pp.  xliv-xlv. 

"There  is  a  personal  God,  and  there  is  a  personal  Devil!"  thunders 
the  Christian  preacher.  "Let  him  be  anathema  who  dares  say  nay!" 
"There  is  no  personal  God,  except  the  gray  matter  in  our  brain,"  con- 
temptuously replies  the  materialist.  "And  there  is  no  Devil.  Let  him 
be  considered  thrice  an  idiot  who  says  aye."  Meanwhile  the  occultists 
and  true  philosophers  heed  neither  of  the  two  combatants,  but  keep  per- 
severingly  at  their  work.  None  of  them  believe  in  the  absurd,  passionate, 
and  fickle  God  of  superstition,  but  all  of  them  believe  in  good  and  evil. 
Our  human  reason,  the  emanation  of  our  finite  mind,  is  certainly  incapable 
of  comprehending  a  divine  intelligence,  an  endless  and  infinite  entity; 
and,  according  to  strict  logic,  that  which  transcends  our  understanding 
and  would  remain  thoroughly  incomprehensible  to  our  senses  cannot  exist 
for  us;  hence  it  does  not  exist.  So  far  finite  reason  agrees  with  science, 
and  says:  "There  is  no  God."  But,  on  the  other  hand,  our  Ego,  that 
which  lives  and  thinks  and  feels  independently  of  us  in  our  mortal  casket, 
does  more  than  believe.  It  knoivs  that  there  exists  a  God  in  nature,  for 
the  sole  and  invincible  Artificer  of  all  lives  in  us  as  we  Hve  in  Him.  No 
dogmatic  faith  or  exact  science  is  able  to  uproot  that  intuitional  feeling 
inherent  in  man,  when  he  has  once  fully  realized  it  in  himself. 

—  Vol.  I,  p.  36. 

It  is  an  easy  task  to  show  that  the  cosmogonical  legends  all  over  the 
world  are  based  on  a  knowledge  by  the  ancients  of  those  sciences  which 
have  allied  themselves  in  our  days  to  support  the  doctrine  of  evolution; 


QUOTATIONS  FROM   "ISIS  UNVEILED"  55 

and  that  further  research  may  demonstrate  that  they  were  far  better 
acquainted  with  the  fact  of  evolution  itself,  embracing  both  its  physical 
and  spiritual  aspects,  than  we  are  now.  With  the  old  philosophers  evolu- 
tion was  a  universal  theorem,  a  doctrine  embracing  the  whole,  and  an 
established  principle;  while  our  modern  evolutionists  are  enabled  to 
present  us  merely  with  speculative  theoretics;  with  particular,  if  not 
wholly  negative  theorems.  It  is  idle  for  the  representatives  of  our  modern 
wisdom  to  close  the  debate  and  pretend  that  the  question  is  settled, 
merely  because  the  obscure  phraseology  of  the  Mosaic,  far  later  account 
clashes  with  the  definite  exegesis  of  'exact  science.' 

One  fact  at  least  is  proved:  there  is  not  a  cosmogonical  fragment,  to 
whatever  nation  it  may  belong,  but  proves,  by  this  universal  allegory  of 
water  and  the  spirit  brooding  over  it,  that  no  more  than  our  modern 
physicists  did  any  of  these  nations  hold  the  universe  to  have  sprung  into 
existence  out  of  nothing;  for  all  their  legends  begin  with  that  period  when 
nascent  vapors  and  Cimmerian  darkness  lay  brooding  over  a  fluid  mass 
ready  to  start  on  its  journey  of  activity  at  the  first  flutter  of  the  breath  of 
Him,  who  is  the  Unrevealed  One.  Him  they  felt,  if  they  saw  Him  not. 
Their  spiritual  intuitions  were  not  so  darkened  by  the  subtle  sophistry  of 
the  forthcoming  ages  as  ours  are  now.  If  they  talked  less  of  the  Silurian 
age  slowly  developing  into  the  Mammalian,  and  if  the  Cenozoic  time  was 
only  recorded  by  various  allegories  of  the  primitive  man  —  the  Adam  of 
our  race  —  it  is  but  a  negative  proof  after  all  that  their  '  wise  men '  and 
leaders  did  not  know  of  these  successive  periods  as  well  as  we  do  now. 
In  the  days  of  Democritus  and  Aristotle  the  cycle  had  already  begun  to 
enter  on  its  downward  path  of  progress.  And  if  these  two  philosophers 
could  discuss  so  well  the  atomic  theory  and  trace  the  atom  to  its  material 
or  physical  point,  their  ancestors  may  have  gone  further  still  and  followed 
its  genesis  far  beyond  that  limit  where  Mr.  Tyndall  and  others  seem 
rooted  to  the  spot,  not  daring  to  cross  the  line  of  the  'Incomprehensible.' 
The  lost  arts  are  a  sufficient  proof  that  if  even  their  achievements  in 
physiography  are  now  doubted  —  because  of  the  unsatisfactory  writings 
of  their  physicists  and  naturalists  —  on  the  other  hand  their  practical 
knowledge  in  phytochemistry  and  mineralogy  far  exceeded  our  own. 
Furthermore,  they  might  have  been  perfectly  acquainted  with  the  physi- 
cal history  of  our  globe  without  publishing  their  knowledge  to  the  ignorant 
masses  in  those  ages  of  religious  Mysteries. —  Vol.   I,  pp.   134-135. 

"Three  spirits  live  in  and  actuate  man,"  teaches  Paracelsus;  "three 
worlds  pour  their  beams  upon  him;  but  all  three  only  as  the  image  and 
echo  of  one  and  the  same  all-constructing  and  uniting  principle  of  pro- 
duction.   The  first  is  the  spirit  of  the  elements  [terrestrial  body  and  vital 


56  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

force  in  its  brute  condition];  the  second,  the  spirit  of  the  stars  [sidereal 
or  astral  body  —  the  soul];  the  third  is  the  Divine  spirit  [Aiigoeides].'" 
Our  human  body  being  possessed  of  "primeval  earth-stuff,"  as  Paracelsus 
calls  it,  we  may  readily  accept  the  tendency  of  modern  scientific  research 
"to  regard  the  processes  of  both  animal  and  vegetable  Hfe  as  simply 
physical  and  chemical."  This  theory  only  serves  to  corroborate  the 
assertions  of  old  philosophers  and  the  Mosaic  Bible,  that  from  the  dust 
of  the  ground  our  bodies  were  made,  and  to  dust  they  will  return.  But 
we  must  remember  that 

"  'Dust  thou  art,  to  dust  returnest,' 
Was  not  spoken  of  the  soul." 

Man  is  a  little  world  —  a  microcosm  within  the  great  universe.  Like 
a  foetus,  he  is  suspended,  by  all  his  three  spirits,  in  the  matrix  of  the  macro- 
cosmos;  and  while  his  terrestrial  body  is  in  constant  sympathy  with  its 
parent  earth,  his  astral  soul  lives  in  unison  with  the  sidereal  anima  miindi. 
He  is  in  it,  as  it  is  in  him,  for  the  world-pervading  element  fills  all  space, 
and  is  space  itself,  only  shoreless  and  infinite.  As  to  his  third  spirit,  the 
divine,  what  is  it  but  an  infinitesimal  ray,  one  of  the  countless  radiations 
proceeding  directly  from  the  Highest  Cause  —  the  Spiritual  Light  of  the 
World?  This  is  the  trinity  of  organic  and  inorganic  nature  —  the  spiritual 
and  the  physical,  which  are  three  in  one,  and  of  which  Proclus  says  that 
"The  first  monad  is  the  Eternal  God;  the  second,  eternity;  the  third, 
the  paradigm,  or  pattern  of  the  universe";  the  three  constituting  the 
InteUigible  Triad.  Everything  in  this  visible  universe  is  the  outflow  of 
this  Triad,  and  a  microcosmic  triad  itself.  And  thus  these  inner  worlds 
move  in  majestic  procession  in  the  fields  of  eternity  around  the  spiritual 
sun,  as  in  the  heHocentric  system  the  celestial  bodies  move  round  the 
visible  suns.  The  Pythagorean  Monad,  which  fives  'in  solitude  and  dark- 
ness,' may  remain  on  this  earth  forever  invisible,  impalpable,  and  un- 
demonstrated  by  experimental  science.  Still  the  whole  universe  will  be 
gravitating  around  it,  as  it  did  from  the  'beginning  of  time,'  and  with 
every  second  man  and  atom  approach  nearer  to  that  solemn  moment  in 
the  eternity  when  the  Invisible  Presence  will  become  clear  to  their  spiritual 
sight.  When  every  particle  of  matter,  even  the  most  sublimated,  has  been 
cast  off  from  the  last  shape  that  forms  the  ultimate  link  of  that  chain  of 
double  evolution  which,  throughout  millions  of  ages  and  successive  trans- 
formations, has  pushed  the  entity  onward;  and  when  it  shall  find  itself 
reclothed  in  that  primordial  essence,  identical  with  that  of  its  Creator, 
then  this  once  impalpable  organic  atom  will  have  run  its  race,  and  the 
sons  of  God  will  once  more  'shout  for  ioy'  at  the  return  of  the  pilgrim. 

—  Vol.  I,  pp.  212-213. 


QUOTATIONS  FROM   "ISIS  UNVEILED"  57 

The  master-problems  of  both  hfe  and  death  are  still  unsolved  by  occi- 
dental physiologists.  Even  sleep  is  a  phenomenon  about  whose  cause 
there  is  a  great  divergence  of  opinion  among  them.  How  then  can  they 
pretend  to  set  limits  to  the  possible,  and  define  the  impossible? 

—  Vol.  I,  p.  215. 

Everything  in  this  world  has  its  time,  and  truth,  though  based  upon 
unimpeachable  evidence,  will  not  take  root  or  grow  unless  like  a  plant  it 
is  thrown  into  soil  in  its  proper  season. —  Vol.  I,  p.  219. 

The  fruit  of  the  Tree  of  Knowledge  gives  death  without  the  fruit  of  the 
Tree  of  Life.  Man  must  know  himself  before  he  can  hope  to  know  the 
ultimate  genesis  even  of  beings  and  powers  less  developed  in  their  inner 
nature  than  himself.  So  with  religion  and  science;  united  two  in  one, 
they  were  infallible,  for  the  spiritual  intuition  was  there  to  supply  the 
limitations  of  physical  senses.  Separated,  exact  science  rejects  the  help 
of  the  inner  voice,  while  religion  becomes  merely  dogmatic  theology  — 
each  is  but  a  corpse  without  a  soul. —  Vol.  II,  p.  264. 

Light  would  be  incomprehensible  without  darkness,  to  make  it  mani- 
fest by  contrast;  good  would  be  no  good  without  evil,  to  show  the  priceless 
nature  of  the  boon;  and  so  personal  virtue  could  claim  no  merit,  unless  it 
had  passed  through  the  furnace  of  temptation.  Notliing  is  eternal  and 
unchangeable,  save  the  Concealed  Deity.  Nothing  that  is  finite  —  whe- 
ther because  it  had  a  beginning,  or  must  have  an  end  —  can  remain 
stationary.  It  must  either  progress  or  recede;  and  a  soul  which  thirsts 
after  a  reunion  with  its  spirit,  which  alone  confers  upon  it  immortality, 
must  purify  itself  through  cyclic  transmigrations  onward  toward  the 
only  Land  of  Bliss  and  Eternal  Rest,  called  in  the  Zohar  'The  Palace  of 
Love ' ;  in  the  Hindu  religion,  Moksha;  among  the  Gnostics,  the  '  Pleroma 
of  eternal  Light';  and  by  the  Buddhists,  Nirvana.  The  Christian  calls 
it  the  'Kingdom  of  Heaven,'  and  claims  to  have  alone  found  the  truth, 
whereas  he  has  but  invented  a  new  name  for  a  doctrine  which  is  coeval 
with  man.— Vol.  II,  p.  280. 

Allied  to  the  physical  half  of  man's  nature  is  reason,  which  enables 
him  to  maintain  his  supremacy  over  the  lower  animals,  and  to  subjugate 
nature  to  his  uses.  Allied  to  his  spiritual  part  is  his  conscience,  which  will 
serve  as  his  unerring  guide  through  the  besetments  of  the  senses;  for 
conscience  is  that  instantaneous  perception  between  right  and  wrong, 
exercised  only  by  the  spirit,  which,  being  a  portion  of  the  Divine  Wisdom 
and  Purity,  is  absolutely  pure  and  wise.    Its  promptings  are  independent 


58  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

of  reason,  and  it  can  only  manifest  itself  clearly  when  unhampered  by 
the  baser  attractions  of  our  dual  nature. —  Vol.  I,  p.  305. 


There  never  was,  nor  can  there  be  more  than  one  universal  religion; 
for  there  can  be  but  one  truth  concerning  God.  Like  an  immense  chain 
whose  upper  end,  the  alpha,  remains  invisibly  emanating  from  a  Deity  — 
in  statu  abscondito  with  every  primitive  theology  —  it  encircles  our  globe 
in  every  direction;  it  leaves  not  even  the  darkest  corner  un visited,  before 
the  other  end,  the  omega,  turns  back  on  its  way  to  be  again  received 
where  it  first  emanated.  On  this  divine  chain  was  strung  the  exoteric 
symbology  of  every  people.  Their  variety  of  form  is  powerless  to  affect 
their  substance,  and  under  their  diverse  ideal  types  of  the  universe  of 
matter,  symbolizing  its  vivifying  principles,  the  uncorrupted  immaterial 
image  of  the  spirit  of  being  guiding  them  is  the  same. 

So  far  as  human  intellect  can  go  in  the  ideal  interpretation  of  the 
spiritual  universe,  its  laws  and  powers,  the  last  word  was  pronounced 
ages  since;  and,  if  the  ideas  of  Plato  can  be  simplified  for  the  sake  of 
easier  comprehension,  the  spirit  of  their  substance  can  neither  be  altered 
nor  removed  without  material  damage  to  the  truth.  Let  human  brains 
submit  themselves  to  torture  for  thousands  of  years  to  come;  let  theology 
perplex  faith  and  mime  it  with  the  enforcing  of  incomprehensible  dogmas  in 
metaphysics;  and  let  science  strengthen  skepticism  by  pulling  down  the 
tottering  remains  of  spiritual  intuition  in  mankind  with  her  demonstrations 
of  its  fallibility,  eternal  truth  can  never  be  destroyed. —  Vol.  I,  p.  560. 


QUOTATIONS    FROM     "THE    SECRET    DOCTRINE" 

PUBLISHED    IN    1888 

THESE  truths  are  in  no  sense  put  forward  as  a  revelation;  nor  does  the 
author  claim  the  position  of  a  revealer  of  mystic  lore,  now  made  public 
for  the  first  time  in  the  world's  history.  For  what  is  contained  in  this 
work  is  to  be  found  scattered  throughout  thousands  of  volumes  embodying 
the  scriptures  of  the  great  Asiatic  and  early  European  religions,  hidden  un- 
der glyph  and  symbol,  and  hitherto  left  unnoticed  because  of  this  veil. 
What  is  now  attempted  is  to  gather  the  oldest  tenets  together  and  to  make 
of  them  one  harmonious  and  unbroken  whole.  The  sole  advantage  which 
the  writer  has  over  her  predecessors,  is  that  she  need  not  resort  to  personal 
speculations  and  theories.  For  this  work  is  a  partial  statement  of  what  she 
herself  has  been  taught  by  more  advanced  students,  supplemented,  in  a  few 


QUOTATIONS  FROM   "THE   SECRET   DOCTRINE"  59 

details  only,  by  the  results  of  her  own  study  and  observation.  The  publica- 
tion of  many  of  the  facts  herein  stated  has  been  rendered  necessary  by  the 
wild  and  fanciful  speculations  in  which  many  Theosophists  and  students 
of  mysticism  have  indulged,  during  the  last  few  years,  in  their  endeavor 
to,  as  they  imagined,  work  out  a  complete  system  of  thought  from  the 
few  facts  previously  communicated  to  them.* 

But  it  is  perhaps  desirable  to  state  unequivocally  that  the  teachings, 
however  fragmentary  and  incomplete,  contained  in  these  volumes,  belong 
neither  to  the  Hindu,  the  Zoroastrian,  the  Chaldaean,  nor  the  Egyptian 
religion,  neither  to  Buddhism,  Islam,  Judaism  nor  Christianity  exclusively. 
The  Secret  Doctrine  is  the  essence  of  all  these.  Sprung  from  it  in  their 
origins,  the  various  religious  schemes  are  now  made  to  merge  back  into 
their  original  element,  out  of  which  every  mystery  and  dogma  has  grown, 
developed,  and  become  materiahzed. 

The  aim  of  this  work  may  be  thus  stated:  to  show  that  Nature  is  not 
"a  fortuitous  concurrence  of  atoms,"  and  to  assign  to  man  his  rightful 
place  in  the  scheme  of  the  Universe;  to  rescue  from  degradation  the 
archaic  truths  which  are  the  basis  of  all  rehgions;  and  to  uncover,  to 
some  extent,  the  fundamental  unity  from  which  they  all  spring;  finally, 
to  show  that  the  occult  side  of  Nature  has  never  been  approached  by  the 
Science  of  modern  civilization.—  Preface,  pp.  vii-viii 

.  .  .  For  the  Esoteric  philosophy  is  alone  calculated  to  withstand,  in 
this  age  of  crass  and  illogical  materialism,  the  repeated  attacks  on  all  and 
everything  man  holds  most  dear  and  sacred,  in  his  inner  spiritual  life. 
The  true  philosopher,  the  student  of  the  Esoteric  Wisdom,  entirely  loses 
sight  of  personalities,  dogmatic  beliefs  and  special  religions.  Moreover, 
Esoteric  philosophy  reconciles  all  religions,  strips  every  one  of  its  outward, 
human  garments,  and  shows  the  root  of  each  to  be  identical  with  that 
of  every  other  great  religion.  It  proves  the  necessity  of  an  absolute  Divine 
Principle  in  nature.  It  denies  Deity  no  more  than  it  does  the  Sun. 
Esoteric  philosophy  has  never  rejected  God  in  Nature,  nor  Deity  as  the 
absolute  and  abstract  Ens.  It  only  refuses  to  accept  any  of  the  gods 
of  the  so-called  monotheistic  religions,  gods  created  by  man  in  his  own 

[*Wild  and  fanciful  speculations  are  still  indulged  in  by  would-be  expounders  of  the  Theo- 
sophical  teaching,^  not  members  of  the  Universal  Brotherhood  and  Theosophical  Society  — 
and  the  many  books  on  pseudo-Theosophy  offered  to  the  more  or  less  uninformed  public  show 
that  the  same  need  exists  today,  as  when  Mme.  Blavatsky  wrote  her  great  work,  of  holding  to 
and  accentuating  the  pure  teachings  of  the   Wisdom-Religion.—  Katherine  Tingley] 


60  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

image  and  likeness,  a  blasphemous  and  sorry  caricature  of  the  Ever 
Unknowable. —  Introductory,  p.  xx 

Toward  the  end  of  the  first  quarter  of  this  century,  a  distinct  class  of 
literature  appeared  in  the  world,  which  became  with  every  year  more 
defined  in  its  tendency.  Being  based,  soi-disant,  on  the  scholarly  researches 
of  Sanskritists  and  Orientalists  in  general,  it  was  held  scientific.  Hindu, 
Egyptian,  and  other  ancient  religions,  myths,  and  emblems  were  made 
to  yield  anything  the  symbologist  wanted  them  to  yield,  thus  often 
giving  out  the  rude  outward  form  in  place  of  the  i7i7ier  meaning.  .  .  . 

This  is  the  true  reason,  perhaps,  why  the  outline  of  a  few  fundamental 
truths  from  the  Secret  Doctrine  of  the  Archaic  ages  is  now  permitted  to 
see  the  light,  after  long  millenniums  of  the  most  profound  silence  and 
secrecy.  I  say  "a  few  truths,"  advisedly,  because  that  which  must  remain 
unsaid  could  not  be  contained  in  a  hundred  such  volumes,  nor  could  it  be 
imparted  to  the  present  generation  of  Sadducees.  But,  even  the  little 
that  is  now  given  is  better  than  complete  silence  upon  those  vital  truths. 
The  world  of  today,  in  its  mad  career  towards  the  unknown  —  which 
it  is  too  ready  to  confound  with  the  unknowable,  whenever  the  problem 
eludes  the  grasp  of  the  physicist  —  is  rapidly  progressing  on  the  reverse, 
material  plane  of  spirituality.  It  has  now  become  a  vast  arena  —  a  true 
valley  of  discord  and  of  eternal  strife  —  a  necropolis,  wherein  lie  buried 
the  highest  and  the  most  holy  aspirations  of  our  Spirit-Soul.  That  soul 
becomes  with  every  new  generation  more  paralysed  and  atrophied.  The 
"amiable  infidels  and  accompHshed  profligates"  of  Society,  spoken  of 
by  Greeley,  care  little  for  the  revival  of  the  dead  sciences  of  the  past;  but 
there  is  a  fair  minority  of  earnest  students  who  are  entitled  to  learn  the 
few  truths  that  may  be  given  to  them  now;  and  now  much  more  than  ten 
years  ago,  when  Isis  Unveiled,  or  even  the  later  attempts  to  explain 
the  mysteries  of  esoteric  science,  were  published. —  Ibid.,  pp.  xxii-xxiii 

More  than  one  great  scholar  has  stated  that  there  never  was  a  religious 
founder,  whether  Aryan,  Semitic,  or  Turanian,  who  had  invented  a  new 
religion,  or  revealed  a  new  truth.  These  founders  were  all  transmitters, 
not  original  teachers.  They  were  the  authors  of  new  forms  and  inter- 
pretations, while  the  truths  upon  which  the  latter  were  based  were  as  old 
as  mankind.  Selecting  one  or  more  of  those  grand  verities  —  actualities 
visible  only  to  the  eye  of  the  real  Sage  and  Seer  —  out  of  the  many  orally 
revealed  to  man  in  the  beginning,  preserved  and  perpetuated  in  the 
adyta  of  the  temples  through  initiation,  during  the  Mysteries  and  by 
personal  transmission  —  they  revealed  these  truths  to  the  masses.    Thus 


QUOTATIONS  FROM   "THE   SECRET   DOCTRINE"  61 

every  nation  received  in  its  turn  some  of  the  said  truths,  under  the  veil 
of  its  own  local  and  special  symbolism;  which,  as  time  went  on,  developed 
into  a  more  or  less  philosophical  cultus,  a  Pantheon  in  mythical  disguise. 
Therefore  is  Confucius,  a  very  ancient  legislator  in  historical  chronology, 
though  a  very  modern  Sage  in  the  World's  History,  shown  by  Dr.  Legge  — 
who  calls  him  "emphatically  a  transmitter,  not  a  maker"- — as  saying: 
"I  only  hand  on:  I  cannot  create  new  things.  I  believe  in  the  ancients 
and  therefore  I  love  them."  (Quoted  in  Science  of  Religion  by  Max 
Muller.) 

The  writer  loves  them  too,  and  therefore  believes  in  the  ancients,  and 
the  modern  heirs  to  their  Wisdom.  And  believing  in  both,  she  now  trans- 
mits that  which  she  has  received  and  learned  herself,  to  all  those  who  will 
accept  it.  As  to  those  who  may  reject  her  testimony, —  i.  e.,  the  great 
majority  —  she  will  bear  them  no  maHce,  for  they  will  be  as  right  in  their 
way  in  denying,  as  she  is  right  in  hers  in  affirming,  since  they  look  at 
TRUTH  from  two  entirely  different  standpoints.  Agreeably  with  the  rules 
of  critical  scholarship,  the  Orientalist  has  to  reject  a  priori  whatever 
evidence  he  cannot  fully  verify  for  himself.  And  how  can  a  Western 
scholar  accept  on  hearsay  that  which  he  knows  nothing  about?  Indeed, 
that  which  is  given  in  these  volumes  is  selected  from  oral,  as  much  as 
from  written  teachings.  This  first  instalment  of  the  esoteric  doctrines  is 
based  upon  Stanzas,  which  are  the  records  of  a  people  unknown  to  eth- 
nology; it  is  claimed  that  they  are  written  in  a  tongue  absent  from  the 
nomenclature  of  languages  and  dialects  v/ith  which  philology  is  acquainted; 
they  are  said  to  emanate  from  a  source  (Occultism)  repudiated  by  science; 
and,  finally,  they  are  offered  through  an  agency,  incessantly  discredited 
before  the  world  by  all  those  who  hate  unwelcome  truths,  or  have  some 
special  hobby  of  their  own  to  defend.  Therefore,  the  rejection  of  these 
teachings  may  be  expected,  and  must  be  accepted  beforehand.  No  one 
styling  himself  a  "scholar,"  in  whatever  department  of  exact  science, 
will  be  permitted  to  regard  these  teachings  seriously.  They  will  be  derided 
and  rejected  a  priori  in  this  century;  but  only  in  this  one.  For  in  the 
twentieth  century  of  our  era  scholars  will  begin  to  recognise  that  the 
Secret  Doctrine  has  neither  been  invented  nor  exaggerated,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  simply  outlined;  and  finally,  that  its  teachings  antedate  the 
Vedas.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  Speaking  of  the  keys  to  the  Zodiacal  mysteries  as  being  almost 
lost  to  the  world,  it  was  remarked  by  the  writer  in  his  Unveiled  some 
ten  years  ago  that: 

The  said  key  must  be  turned  seven  times  before  the  whole  system  is 
divulged.  We  will  give  it  but  one  turn,  and  thereby  allow  the  profane  one 
glimpse  into  the  mystery.    Happy  he,  who  understands  the  whole! 


62  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

The  same  may  be  said  of  the  whole  Esoteric  system.  One  turn  of  the 
key,  and  no  more,  was  given  in  *Isis.'  Much  more  is  explained  in  these 
volumes.  In  those  days  the  writer  hardly  knew  the  language  in  which 
the  work  was  written,  and  the  disclosure  of  many  things,  freely  spoken 
about  now,  was  forbidden.  In  Century  the  Twentieth  some  disciple 
more  informed,  and  far  better  fitted,  may  be  sent  by  the  Masters  of 
Wisdom  to  give  final  and  irrefutable  proofs  that  there  exists  a  Science 
called  Gupta-Vidyd;  and  that  like  the  once-mysterious  sources  of  the 
Nile,  the  source  of  all  religions  and  philosophies  now  known  to  the  world 
has  been  for  many  ages  forgotten  and  lost  to  men,  but  is  at  last  found. 

—  Ibid.,  pp.  xxxvii-xxxix 

.  .  .  But  to  the  pubUc  in  general  and  the  readers  of  the  Secret 
Doctrine  I  may  repeat  what  I  have  stated  all  along,  and  which  I  now 
clothe  in  the  words  of  Montaigne:    Gentlemen,  "I  have  here  made 

ONLY   A    NOSEGAY    OF   CULLED    FLOWERS,    AND   HAVE   BROUGHT    NOTHING 
OF  MY  OWN  BUT   THE   STRING  THAT  TIES  THEM." 

Pull  the  "string"  to  pieces  and  cut  it  up  in  shreds,  if  you  will.  As 
for  the  nosegay  of  facts  —  you  will  never  be  able  to  make  away  with 
these.     You  can  only  ignore  them,  and  no  more. 

We  may  close  with  a  parting  word  concerning  this  Volume  I.  In  an 
Introduction  prefacing  a  Part  dealing  chiefly  with  Cosmogony,  certain 
subjects  brought  forward  might  be  deemed  out  of  place,  but  one  more 
consideration  added  to  those  already  given  has  led  me  to  touch  upon 
them.  Every  reader  will  inevitably  judge  the  statements  made  from  the 
standpoint  of  his  own  knowledge,  experience,  and  consciousness,  based 
on  what  he  has  already  learned.  This  fact  the  writer  is  constantly  obliged 
to  bear  in  mind:  hence,  also  the  frequent  references  in  this  first  Book 
to  matters  which,  properly  speaking,  belong  to  a  later  part  of  the  work, 
but  which  could  not  be  passed  by  in  silence,  lest  the  reader  should  look 
down  on  this  work  as  a  fairy  tale  indeed  —  a  fiction  of  some  modern  brain. 

Thus,  the  Past  shall  help  to  realize  the  Present,  and  the  latter  to 
better  appreciate  the  Past.  The  errors  of  the  day  must  be  explained 
and  swept  away,  yet  it  is  more  than  probable  —  and  in  the  present  case 
it  amounts  to  certitude  —  that  once  more  the  testimony  of  long  ages 
and  of  history  will  fail  to  impress  anyone  but  the  very  intuitional  — 
which  is  equal  to  saying  the  very  few.—  Ibid.,  pp.  xlvi-xlvii 

The  Secret  Doctrine  establishes  three  fundamental  propositions: — 

{a)  An  Omnipresent,  Eternal,  Boundless,  and  Immutable  principle 

on  which  all  speculation  is  impossible,  since  it  transcends  the  power  of 


DONATED  BY 
KATHER"^'f^  "'■    "■  ''^ 

QUOTATIONS  FROM   "THE   SECRET  DOCTRINE"  63 

human  conception  and  could  only  be  dwarfed  by  any  human  expression 
or  similitude.  It  is  beyond  the  range  and  reach  of  thought  —  in  the 
words  of  Mdndukaya,  "unthinkable  and  unspeakable." 

To  render  these  ideas  clearer  to  the  general  reader,  let  him  set  out 
with  the  postulate  that  there  is  one  absolute  Reality  which  antecedes 
all  manifested,  conditioned,  being.  This  Infinite  and  Eternal  Cause  — 
dimly  formulated  in  the  "Unconscious"  and  "Unknowable"  of  current 
European  philosophy  —  is  the  rootless  root  of  "all  that  was,  is,  or  ever 
shall  be."  It  is  of  course  devoid  of  all  attributes  and  is  essentially  with- 
out any  relation  to  manifested,  finite  Being.  It  is  "Be-ness"  rather 
than  Being  (in  Sanskrit,  Sat),  and  is  beyond  all  thought  or  speculation. 

—  Vol.  I,  p.  14. 

Parabrahm,  (the  One  Reality,  the  Absolute)  is  the  field  of  Absolute 
Consciousness,  /.  e.,  that  Essence  which  is  out  of  all  relation  to  condi- 
tioned existence,  and  of  which  conscious  existence  is  a  conditioned  symbol. 
But  once  that  we  pass  in  thought  from  this  (to  us)  Absolute  Negation, 
duality  supervenes  in  the  contrast  of  Spirit  (or  consciousness)  and  Matter, 
Subject  and  Object. 

Spirit  (or  Consciousness)  and  Matter  are,  however,  to  be  regarded, 
not  as  independent  realities,  but  as  the  two  facets  or  aspects  of  the  Abso- 
lute (Parabrahm),  which  constitute  the  basis  of  conditioned  Being  whether 
subjective  or  objective.  —  Vol.  I,  p.  15. 

The  "Manifested  Universe,"  therefore,  is  pervaded  by  duality,  which 
is,  as  it  were,  the  very  essence  of  its  EX-istence  as  "manifestation." 
But  just  as  the  opposite  poles  of  subject  and  object,  spirit  and  matter, 
are  but  aspects  of  the  One  Unity  in  which  they  are  synthesized,  so,  in 
the  manifested  Universe,  there  is  "that"  which  links  spirit  to  matter, 
subject  to  object. 

This  something,  at  present  unknown  to  Western  speculation,  is  called 
by  the  occultists  Fohat.  It  is  the  "bridge"  by  which  the  " Ideas"  existing 
in  the  "Divine  Thought"  are  impressed  on  Cosmic  substance  as  the 
"laws  of  Nature."  Fohat  is  thus  the  dynamic  energy  of  Cosmic  Ideation; 
or,  regarded  from  the  other  side,  it  is  the  intelligent  medium,  the  guiding 
power  of  all  manifestation,  the  "Thought  Divine"  transmitted  and  made 
manifest  through  the  Dhyan  Chohans,  the  Architects  of  the  visible 
World.  Thus  from  Spirit,  or  Cosmic  Ideation,  comes  our  consciousness; 
from  Cosmic  Substance  the  several  vehicles  in  which  that  consciousness  is 
individualized  and  attains  to  self  —  or  reflective  —  consciousness;  while 
Fohat,  in  its  various  manifestations,  is  the  mysterious  link  between  Mind 


64  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

and  Matter,  the  animating  principle  electrifying  every  atom  into  life. 

—  Vol.  I,  pp.  15-16. 


Further,  the  Secret  Doctrine  affirms: — 

(b)  The  Eternity  of  the  Universe  in  toto  as  a  boundless  plane;  peri- 
odically "the  playground  of  numberless  Universes  incessantly  mani- 
festing and  disappearing,"  called  "the  manifesting  stars,"  and  the  "Sparks 
of  Eternity."  "The  Eternity  of  the  Pilgrim"  is  like  a  wink  of  the  Eye 
of  Self-Existence  (Book  of  Dzyan).  "The  appearance  and  disappearance 
of  Worlds  is  like  a  regular  tidal  ebb  of  flux  and  reflux." 

This  second  assertion  of  the  Secret  Doctrine  is  the  absolute  univer- 
sality of  that  law  of  periodicity,  of  flux  and  reflux,  ebb  and  flow,  which 
physical  science  has  observed  and  recorded  in  all  departments  of  nature. 
An  alternation  such  as  that  of  Day  and  Night,  Life  and  Death,  Sleeping 
and  Waking,  is  a  fact  so  common,  so  perfectly  universal  and  without 
exception,  that  it  is  easy  to  comprehend  that  in  it  we  see  one  of  the  abso- 
lutely fundamental  laws  of  the  universe. 

Moreover,  the  Secret  Doctrine  teaches: — 

(c)  The  fundamental  identity  of  all  Souls  with  the  Universal  Over- 
Soul,  the  latter  being  itself  an  aspect  of  the  Unknown  Root;  and  the 
obligatory  pilgrimage  for  every  Soul  —  a  spark  of  the  former  —  through 
the  Cycle  of  Incarnation  (or  "Necessity")  in  accordance  with  Cyclic 
and  Karmic  law,  during  the  whole  term.  In  other  words,  no  purely 
spiritual  Buddhi  (divine  Soul)  can  have  an  independent  (conscious) 
existence  before  the  spark  which  issued  from  the  pure  Essence  of  the 
Universal  Sixth  principle  —  or  the  over-soul  —  has  {a)  passed  through 
every  elemental  form  of  the  phenomenal  world  of  that  Manvantara,  and 
{b)  acquired  individuality,  first  by  natural  impulse,  and  then  by  self- 
induced  and  self-devised  efforts  (checked  by  its  Karma),  thus  ascending 
through  all  the  degrees  of  intelHgence,  from  the  lowest  to  the  highest 
Manas,  from  mineral  and  plant,  up  to  the  holiest  archangel  (Dhyani- 
Buddha).  The  pivotal  doctrine  of  the  Esoteric  philosophy  admits  no 
privileges  or  special  gifts  in  man,  save  those  won  by  his  own  Ego  through 
personal  effort  and  merit  throughout  a  long  series  of  metempsychoses 
and  reincarnations. —  Vol.  I,  pp.  16,  17. 


Such  are  the  basic  conceptions  on  which  the  Secret  Doctrine  rests. 

It  would  not  be  in  place  here  to  enter  upon  any  defense  or  proof  of 
their  inherent  reasonableness;  nor  can  I  pause  to  show  how  they  are, 
in  fact,  contained  —  though  too  often  under  a  misleading  guise  —  in  every 
system  of  thought  or  philosophy  worthy  of  the  name. —  Vol.  I,  p.  20. 


QUOTATIONS  FROM   "THE  SECRET  DOCTRINE"  65 

Science  teaches  us  that  the  Hving  as  well  as  the  dead  organism  of 
both  man  and  animal  are  swarming  with  bacteria  of  a  hundred  various 
kinds;  that  from  without  we  are  threatened  with  the  invasion  of  microbes 
with  every  breath  we  draw,  and  from  within  by  leucomaines,  aerobes, 
anaerobes,  and  what  not.  But  Science  never  yet  went  so  far  as  to  assert 
with  the  occult  doctrine  that  our  bodies,  as  well  as  those  of  animals, 
plants,  and  stones,  are  themselves  altogether  built  up  of  such  beings; 
which,  except  larger  species,  no  microscope  can  detect.  So  far,  as  regards 
the  purely  animal  and  material  portion  of  man,  Science  is  on  its  way  to 
discoveries  that  will  go  far  towards  corroborating  this  theory.  Chemistry 
and  physiology  are  the  two  great  magicians  of  the  future,  who  are  destined 
to  open  the  eyes  of  mankind  to  the  great  physical  truths.  With  every  day, 
the  identity  between  the  animal  and  physical  man,  between  the  plant 
and  man,  and  even  between  the  reptile  and  its  nest,  the  rock,  and  man  — 
is  more  and  more  clearly  shown.  The  physical  and  chemical  constituents 
of  all  being  found  to  be  identical,  chemical  science  may  well  say  that 
there  is  no  difference  between  the  matter  which  composes  the  ox  and  that 
which  forms  man.  But  the  Occult  doctrine  is  far  more  explicit.  It  says: — 
Not  only  the  chemical  compoimds  are  the  same,  but  the  same  infinitesimal 
invisible  lives  compose  the  atoms  of  the  bodies  of  the  mountain  and  the 
daisy,  of  man  and  the  ant,  of  the  elephant,  and  of  the  tree  which  shelters 
him  from  the  sun.  Each  particle  —  whether  you  call  it  organic  or  in- 
organic —  is  a  life.  Every  atom  and  molecule  in  the  Universe  is  both 
life-giving  and  death-giving  to  that  form,  inasmuch  as  it  builds  by  aggrega- 
tion universes  and  the  ephemeral  vehicles  ready  to  receive  the  trans- 
migrating soul,  and  as  eternally  destroys  and  changes  the  forms  and  expels 
those  souls  from  their  temporary  abodes.  It  creates  and  kills;  it  is  self- 
generating  and  self-destroying;  it  brings  into  being,  and  annihilates, 
that  mystery  of  mysteries  —  the  living  body  of  man,  animal,  or  plant, 
every  second  in  time  and  space;  and  it  generates  equally  life  and  death, 
beauty  and  ugliness,  good  and  bad,  and  even  the  agreeable  and  dis- 
agreeable, the  beneficent  and  maleficent  sensations.  It  is  that  mysterious 
Life,  represented  collectively  by  countless  myriads  of  lives,  that  follows 
in  its  own  sporadic  way,  the  hitherto  incomprehensible  law  of  Atavism; 
that  copies  family  resemblances  as  well  as  those  it  finds  impressed  in  the 
aura  of  the  generators  of  every  future  human  being,  a  mystery,  in  short, 
that  will  receive  fuller  attention  elsewhere. —  Vol.  I,  p.  260-261. 


QUOTATIONS    FROM     "THE    KEY    TO    THEOSOPHY" 

published  in  1889 

The  Future  of  the  Theosophical  Society 

TNQUIRER.     Tell  me,  what  do  you  expect  for  Theosophy  in  the  future? 

Theosophist.  If  you  speak  of  Theosophy,  I  answer  that,  as  it  has 
existed  eternally  throughout  the  endless  cycles  upon  cycles  of  the  Past, 
so  it  will  ever  exist  throughout  the  infinitudes  of  the  Future,  because 
Theosophy  is  synonymous  with  Everlasting  Truth. 

Inq.  Pardon  me;  I  meant  to  ask  you  rather  about  the  prospects  of  the  Theosophical 
Society. 

Theo.  Its  future  will  depend  almost  entirely  upon  the  degree  of 
selflessness,  earnestness,  devotion,  and  last,  but  not  least,  on  the  amount 
of  knowledge  and  wisdom  possessed  by  those  on  whom  it  will  fall  to  carry 
on  the  work  and  to  direct  the  Society  after  the  death  of  the  founder. 

Inq.  I  quite  see  the  importance  of  their  being  selfless  and  devoted,  but  I  do  not  quite 
grasp  how  their  knoivledge  can  be  as  vital  a  factor  in  the  question  as  these  other  qualities. 
Surely  the  literature  which  already  exists,  and  to  which  constant  additions  are  being  made, 
ought  to  be  sufficient. 

Theo.  I  do  not  refer  to  technical  knowledge  of  the  esoteric  doctrine, 
though  that  is  most  important;  I  spoke  rather  of  the  great  need  which 
the  successors  in  the  guidance  of  the  Society  will  have  of  unbiased  and 
clear  judgment.  Every  such  attempt  as  the  Theosophical  Society  has 
hitherto  ended  in  failure,  because,  sooner  or  later,  it  has  degenerated  into 
a  sect,  set  up  hard-and-fast  dogmas  of  its  own,  and  so  lost  by  imperceptible 
degrees  that  vitality  which  living  truth  alone  can  impart.  You  must 
remember  that  all  our  members  have  been  bred  and  born  in  some  creed 
or  religion;  that  all  are  more  or  less  of  their  generation,  both  physically 
and  mentally;  and  consequently  that  their  judgment  is  but  too  likely  to 
be  warped  and  unconsciously  biased  by  some  or  all  of  these  influences. 
If,  then,  they  cannot  be  freed  from  such  inherent  bias,  or  at  least  taught 
to  recognise  it  instantly  and  so  avoid  being  led  away  by  it,  the  result  can 
only  be  that  the  Society  will  drift  off  on  to  some  sandbank  of  thought  or 
another,  and  there  remain,  a  stranded  carcase,  to  molder  and  die. 

Inq.     But  if  this  danger  be  averted? 

Theo.  Then  the  Society  will  Hve  on  into  and  through  the  twentieth 
century.  It  will  gradually  leaven  and  permeate  the  great  mass  of  thinking 
and  inteUigent  people  with  its  large-minded  and  noble  ideas  of  religion, 
duty,  and  philanthropy.    Slowly  but  surely  it  will  burst  asunder  the  iron 


DONATED  BY 
("KATHERINE  TINGLEY 


V 


QUOTATIONS  FROM   "TPIE   KEY  TO  THEOSOPHY"  67 

fetters  of  creeds  and  dogmas,  of  social  and  caste  prejudices;  it  will  break 
down  racial  and  national  antipathies  and  barriers,  and  will  open  the  way 
to  the  practical  realization  of  the  Brotherhood  of  all  men.  Through  its 
teaching,  through  the  philosophy  which  it  has  rendered  accessible  and 
intelligible  to  the  modern  mind  the  West  will  learn  to  understand  and 
appreciate  the  East  at  its  true  value.  Further,  the  development  of  the 
psychic  powers  and  faculties,  the  premonitory  symptoms  of  which  are 
already  visible  in  America,  will  proceed  healthily  and  normally.  Mankind 
will  be  saved  from  the  terrible  dangers,  both  mental  and  bodily,  which 
are  inevitable  when  that  unfolding  takes  place,  as  it  threatens  to  do,  in 
a  hotbed  of  selfishness  and  all  evil  passions.  Man's  mental  and  psychic 
growth  will  proceed  in  harmony  with  his  moral  improvement,  while  his 
material  surroundings  will  reflect  the  peace  and  fraternal  goodwill  which 
will  reign  in  his  mind,  instead  of  the  discord  and  strife  which  are  every- 
where apparent  around  us  today. 

Inq.  a  truly  delightful  picture!  But  tell  me,  do  you  really  expect  all  this  to  be  accom- 
plished in  one  short  century? 

Theo.  Scarcely.  But  I  must  tell  you  that  during  the  last  quarter 
of  every  hundred  years  an  attempt  is  made  by  those  Teachers  of  whom 
I  have  spoken,  to  help  on  the  spiritual  progress  of  humanity  in  a  marked 
and  definite  way.  Toward  the  close  of  each  century  you  will  invariably 
find  that  an  outpouring  or  upheaval  of  spirituality  —  or  call  it  Mys- 
ticism, if  you  prefer  —  has  taken  place.  Some  one  or  more  persons  have 
appeared  in  the  world  as  their  agents,  and  a  greater  or  less  amount  of 
occult  knowledge  and  teaching  has  been  given  out.  If  you  care  to  do  so, 
you  can  trace  these  movements  back,  century  by  century,  as  far  as  our 
detailed  historical  records  extend. 

Inq.     But  how  does  this  bear  on  the  future  of  the  Theosophical  Society? 

Theo.  If  the  present  attempt,  in  the  form  of  our  Society,  succeeds 
better  than  its  predecessors  have  done,  then  it  will  be  in  existence  as  an 
organized,  living,  and  healthy  body  when  the  time  comes  for  the  effort 
of  the  twentieth  century.  The  general  condition  of  men's  minds  and  hearts 
will  have  been  improved  and  i^urified  by  the  spread  of  its  teachings  and, 
as  I  have  said,  their  prejudices  and  dogmatic  illusions  will  have  been,  to 
some  extent  at  least,  removed.  Not  only  so,  but  besides  a  large  and 
accessible  literature  ready  to  men's  hands,  the  next  impulse  will  find  a 
numerous  and  united  body  of  people  ready  to  welcome  the  new  torch- 
bearer  of  Truth.  He  will  find  the  minds  of  men  prepared  for  his  message, 
a  language  ready  for  him  in  which  to  clothe  the  new  truths  he  brings,  an 
organization  awaiting  his  arrival,  which  will  remove  the  merely  mechanical 
material  obstacles  and  difficulties  from  his  path.    Think  how  much  one 


68  HELENA   PETROVNA   BLAVATSKY 

to  whom  such  an  opportunity  is  given  could  accomphsh.  Measure  it  by 
comparison  with  what  the  Theosophical  Society  actually  has  achieved 
in  the  last  fourteen  years,  without  any  of  these  advantages,  and  surrounded 
by  hosts  of  hindrances  which  would  not  hamper  this  new  leader.  Consider 
all  this,  and  then  tell  me  whether  I  am  too  sanguine  when  I  say  that  if 
the  Theosophical  Society  survives  and  lives  true  to  its  mission,  to  its 
original  impulses  through  the  next  hundred  years  —  tell  me,  I  say,  if  I  go 
too  far  in  asserting  that  earth  will  be  a  heaven  in  the  twenty-first  century 
in  comparison  with  what  it  is  now ! —  pp.  292-295. 


QUOTATIONS    FROM     "THE    NEW    CYCLE"* 

THE  principal  aim  of  our  organization,  which  we  are  laboring  to  make  a 
real  Brotherhood,  is  expressed  in  the  motto  of  the  Theosophical  So- 
ciety, "There  is  no  rehgion  higher  than  truth."  As  an  impersonal 
Society  we  must  be  ready  to  seize  the  truth  wherever  we  find  it,  without 
permitting  ourselves  more  partiality  for  one  belief  than  for  another.  This 
leads  directly  to  a  logical  conclusion.  If  we  acclaim  and  receive  with  open 
arms  all  sincere  truth-seekers,  there  can  be  no  place  in  our  ranks  for  the 
bigot,  the  sectarian,  or  the  hypocrite,  enclosed  in  Chinese  Walls  of  dogma, 
each  stone  bearing  the  words  'No  admission.'  What  place  indeed  could 
such  fanatics  occupy  in  them,  fanatics  whose  religions  forbid  all  inquiry 
and  do  not  admit  any  argument  as  possible,  when  the  mother  idea,  the 
very  root  of  the  beautiful  plant  we  call  Theosophy,  is  known  as  —  abso- 
lute and  unfettered  liberty  to  investigate  all  the  mysteries  of  nature, 
human  or  divine! 

With  this  exception  the  Society  invites  everyone  to  participate  in  its 
activities  and  discoveries.  Whoever  feels  his  heart  beat  in  unison  with 
the  great  heart  of  humanity;  whoever  feels  his  interests  are  one  with 
those  of  every  being  poorer  and  less  fortunate  than  himself;  every  man 
or  woman  who  is  ready  to  hold  out  a  helping  hand  to  the  suffering;  who- 
ever understands  the  true  meaning  of  the  word  '  egotism ' ;  is  a  Theosophist 
by  birth  and  by  right.  He  can  always  be  sure  of  finding  sympathetic 
souls  among  us.  .  .  . 

We  have  already  said  elsewhere,  that  "Born  in  the  United  States 
the  Theosophical  Society  was  constituted  on  the  model  of  its  mother 
country.  That  as  we  know,  has  omitted  the  name  of  God  from  its  Con- 
stitution, for  fear,  said  the  fathers  of  the  Republic,  that  the  word  might 
one  day  become  the  pretext  for  a  state  religion:    for  they  desired  to 

*  Extracts  from  an  article  published  in  the  first  number  of  La  Revue  TMosophique  (Paris),  1889. 


QUOTATIONS  FROM  "THE  NEW  CYCLE"  69 

grant  absolute  equality  to  all  religions  under  the  laws,  so  that  each  form 
would  support  the  State,  which  in  its  turn  would  protect  them  all.  The 
Theosophical  Society  was  founded  on  that  excellent  model  .  .  .  [and] 
provided  all  remain  united  in  the  tie  of  Solidarity  or  Brotherhood,  our 
Society  can  truly  call  itself  a  'Republic  of  Conscience.'  " 

Though  absolutely  free  to  pursue  whatever  intellectual  occupations 
please  him  the  best,  each  member  of  our  Society  must,  however,  furnish 
some  reason  for  belonging  thereto,  which  amounts  to  saying  that  each 
member  must  bear  his  part,  small  though  it  be,  of  mental  or  other  labor 
for  the  benefit  of  all.  //  one  does  not  work  for  others  one  has  no  right  to  be 
called  a  Theosophist.  All  must  strive  for  human  freedom  of  thought, 
for  the  elimination  of  selfish  and  sectarian  superstitions,  and  for  the 
discovery  of  all  the  truths  that  are  within  the  comprehension  of  the 
human  mind.  That  object  cannot  be  attained  more  certainly  than  by 
the  cultivation  of  unity  in  intellectual  labors.  No  honest  worker,  no 
earnest  seeker  can  remain  empty-handed;  and  there  is  hardly  a  man 
or  woman,  busy  as  they  may  think  themselves,  incapable  of  laying  their 
tribute,  moral  or  pecuniary,  on  the  altar  of  truth.  The  duty  of  the 
presidents  of  the  sections  and  of  branches  will  be  henceforth  to  watch 
that  there  are  no  drones  in  the  Theosophical  bee-hive  who  do  nothing 
but  buzz. 

In  the  present  condition  of  the  Theosophical  history  it  is  easy  to 
understand  the  object  of  a  Review  exclusively  devoted  to  the  propagation 
of  our  ideas.  We  wish  to  open  therein  new  intellectual  horizons,  to 
follow  unexplored  routes  leading  to  the  amelioration  of  humanity;  to 
offer  a  word  of  consolation  to  all  the  disinherited  of  the  earth,  whether 
they  suffer  from  the  starvation  of  soul  or  from  the  lack  of  physical  neces- 
sities. We  invite  all  large-hearted  persons  who  desire  to  respond  to  this 
appeal  to  join  with  us  in  this  humanitarian  work.  Each  co-worker, 
whether  a  member  of  the  Society  or  simply  a  sympathizer,  can  help. 
We  are  face  to  face  with  all  the  glorious  possibilities  of  the  future.  This 
is  again  the  hour  of  the  great  cyclic  return  of  the  tide  of  mystical  thought 
in  Europe.  On  every  side  we  are  surrounded  by  the  ocean  of  the  universal 
science, —  the  science  of  Life  Eternal  —  bearing  on  its  waves  the  forgotten 
and  submerged  treasures  of  generations  now  passed  away,  treasures  still 
unknown  to  the  modern  civilized  races.  The  strong  current  which  rises 
from  the  submarine  abysses,  from  the  depths  where  lie  the  prehistoric 
learning  and  arts  swallowed  up  with  the  antediluvian  giants  —  demi-gods, 
though  with  but  little  of  mortality  —  that  current  strikes  us  in  the  face 
and  murmurs:  "That  which  has  been  exists  again;  that  which  has  been 
forgotten,  buried  for  aeons  in  the  depths  of  the  Jurassic  strata  may 
reappear  to  view  once  again.    Prepare  yourselves." 


70  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

Happy  are  those  who  understand  the  language  of  the  elements.  But 
where  are  they  going  for  whom  the  word  'element'  has  no  other  meaning 
than  that  given  to  it  by  physics  or  materialistic  chemistry?  Will  it  be 
towards  well-known  shores  that  the  surge  of  the  great  waters  will  bear 
them,  when  they  have  lost  their  footing  in  the  deluge  which  is  approaching? 
Will  it  be  towards  the  peaks  of  a  new  Ararat  that  they  will  find  themselves 
carried,  towards  the  heights  of  light  and  sunshine,  where  there  is  a  ledge 
on  which  to  place  the  feet  in  safety,  or  perchance  is  it  a  fathomless  abyss 
that  will  swallow  them  up  as  soon  as  they  try  to  struggle  against  the 
irresistible  billows  of  an  unknown  element? 

.  .  .  The  strife  will  be  terrible  in  any  case  between  brutal  materialism 
and  blind  fanaticism  on  the  one  hand,  and  philosophy  and  mysticism 
on  the  other;  — mysticism,  that  veil  of  more  or  less  translucency  which 
hides  the  eternal  Truth. 

But  it  is  not  materialism  that  will  get  the  upper  hand.  Every  fanatic 
whose  ideas  isolate  him  from  the  universal  axiom  that  "There  is  no 
rehgion  higher  than  Truth"  will  see  himself  by  that  very  fact  rejected, 
like  an  unworthy  stone,  from  the  archway  called  Universal  Brotherhood. 

Yes,  it  must  be  so,  it  cannot  be  otherwise  when  the  chilly  and  artificial 
gleam  of  modern  materialism  will  disappear  for  want  of  fuel.  Those  who 
cannot  form  any  idea  of  a  spiritual  Ego,  a  living  soul  and  an  eternal  Spirit 
within  their  material  shell  (which  owes  its  very  existence  to  these  prin- 
ciples) ;  those  for  whom  the  great  hope  of  an  existence  beyond  the  grave 
is  a  vexation,  merely  the  symbol  of  an  unknown  quantity,  or  else  the 
subject  of  a  belief  sui  generis,  the  result  of  theological  and  mediumistic 
hallucinations, —  these  mil  do  well  to  prepare  for  the  serious  troubles 
the  future  has  in  store  for  them.  For  from  the  depths  of  the  dark,  muddy 
waters  of  materiality  which  hide  from  them  every  glimpse  of  the  horizons 
of  the  great  Beyond  there  is  a  mystic  force  rising  during  these  last  years 
of  the  century.  At  most  it  is  but  the  first  gentle  rustling,  but  it  is  a 
superhuman  rustling,— 'supernatural'  only  for  the  superstitious  and  the 
ignorant.  The  spirit  of  truth  is  passing  over  the  face  of  the  waters,  and 
in  dividing  them,  is  compelling  them  to  disgorge  their  spiritual  treasures. 
This  spirit  is  a  force  that  can  neither  be  hindered  nor  stopped.  Those 
who  recognise  it  and  feel  that  this  is  the  supreme  moment  of  their  salva- 
tion will  be  uplifted  by  it  and  carried  beyond  illusions.  The  joy  they 
will  experience  will  be  so  poignant  and  intense  that  if  they  were  not 
mentally  isolated  from  their  body  of  flesh,  the  beatitude  would  pierce 
them  like  sharp  steel.  It  is  not  pleasure  that  they  will  experience  but 
a  bliss  which  is  a  foretaste  of  the  wisdom  of  the  gods,  the  knowledge 
of  good  and  evil,  of  the  fruits  of  the  tree  of  life. 


DONATED  BY 
KATHERINE  TiN^'  "^"^ 


QUOTATIONS  FROM   "THE   NEW  CYCLE"  71 

But  whether  the  man  of  today  be  a  fanatic,  a  skeptic  or  a  mystic,  he 
must  be  well  convinced  that  it  is  useless  for  him  to  struggle  against  the  two 
moral  forces  at  large  now  engaged  in  the  supreme  contest.  He  is  at  the 
mercy  of  these  two  adversaries  and  there  is  no  intermediary  capable  of  pro- 
tecting him.  It  is  but  a  question  of  choice,  whether  to  let  himself  be  carried 
along  on  the  wave  of  the  mystical  evolution,  or  to  struggle  against  this 
moral  and  psychic  reaction  and  so  find  himself  engulfed  in  the  maelstrom  of 
the  rising  tide.  The  whole  world,  at  this  time,  with  its  centers  of  high 
intelligence  and  humane  culture,  its  political,  artistic,  literary  and  com- 
mercial life,  is  in  a  turmoil;  everything  is  shaking  and  crumbling  in  its 
movement  towards  reform.  It  is  useless  to  shut  the  eyes,  it  is  useless  to 
hope  that  anyone  can  remain  neutral  between  the  two  contending  forces; 
the  choice  is  whether  to  be  crushed  between  them  or  to  become  united 
with  one  or  the  other.  The  man  who  imagines  he  has  freedom,  but  who; 
nevertheless,  remains  plunged  in  that  seething  caldron  of  selfish  pleasure- 
seeking,  gives  the  lie  in  the  face  of  his  divine  Ego,  a  lie  so  terrible  that  it 
will  stifle  that  Higher  Self  for  a  long  series  of  future  incarnations.  All 
you  who  hesitate  in  the  path  of  Theosophy  and  the  occult  sciences,  who 
trembling  on  the  golden  threshold  of  truth  —  the  only  one  within  your 
grasp,  for  all  the  others  have  failed  you  one  after  the  other  —  look  straight 
in  the  face  the  great  Reality  which  is  offered  you.  It  is  only  to  mystics 
that  these  words  are  addressed,  for  them  alone  have  they  any  importance; 
for  those  who  have  already  made  their  choice  they  are  vain  and  useless. 
But  you  students  of  Occultism  and  Theosophy,  you  well  know  that  a 
word,  old  as  the  world  though  new  to  you,  has  been  declared  at  the 
beginning  of  this  cycle.  You  well  know  that  a  note  has  just  been  struck 
which  has  never  yet  been  heard  by  mankind  of  the  present  era,  and  that  a 
new  thought  is  revealed,  ripened  by  the  forces  of  evolution.  This  thought 
differs  from  everything  that  has  been  produced  in  the  nineteenth  century; 
it  is  identical,  however,  with  the  thought  that  has  been  the  dominant  tone 
and  key-note  of  each  century,  especially  the  last  —  absolute  freedom  of 
thought  for  humanity. 

Why  try  to  strangle  and  suppress  what  cannot  be  destroyed?  Why 
hesitate  when  there  is  no  choice  between  allowing  yourselves  to  be  raised 
on  the  crest  of  the  spiritual  wave  to  the  very  heavens  beyond  the  stars 
and  the  universes,  or  to  be  engulfed  in  the  yawning  abyss  of  an  ocean  of 
matter?  Vain  are  your  efforts  to  sound  the  unfathomable,  to  reach  the 
ultimate  of  this  wonderful  Matter  so  glorified  in  our  century;  for  its 
roots  grow  in  the  Spirit  and  in  the  Absolute;  they  do  not  exist,  yet  they 
are  eternally.  This  constant  union  with  flesh,  blood  and  bones,  the 
illusion  of  differentiated  matter,  does  nothing  but  blind  you.  And  the 
more  you  penetrate  into  the  region  of  the  impalpable  atoms  of  chemistry 


72  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

the  more  you  will  be  convinced  that  they  only  exist  in  your  imagination. 
Do  you  truly  expect  to  find  in  material  life  every  reality  and  every  truth 
of  existence?  But  Death  is  at  everyone's  door,  waiting  to  shut  it  upon  a 
beloved  soul  that  escapes  from  its  prison,  upon  the  soul  which  alone  has 
made  the  body  a  reality;  how  then  can  it  be  that  eternal  Love  should 
associate  itself  absolutely  with  ever-changing  and  ever-disappearing 
matter? 

But  you  are  perhaps  indifferent  to  all  such  things;  how  then  can  you 
say  that  affection  and  the  souls  of  those  you  love  concern  you  at  all,  since 
you  do  not  believe  in  the  very  existence  of  such  souls?  It  must  be  so. 
You  have  made  your  choice;  you  have  entered  upon  that  path  which 
crosses  nothing  but  the  barren  deserts  of  matter.  You  are  self-condemned 
to  wander  there  and  to  pass  through  a  long  series  of  similar  lives.  You 
will  have  to  be  contented  henceforth  with  deliriums  and  fevers  in  place 
of  spiritual  experiences,  of  passion  instead  of  love,  of  the  husk  instead  of 
the  fruit. 

But  you,  friends  and  readers,  you  who  aspire  to  something  more  than 
the  life  of  the  squirrel  everlastingly  turning  the  same  wheel;  you  who  are 
not  content  with  the  seething  of  the  caldron  whose  turmoil  results  in 
nothing;  you  who  do  not  take  the  deaf  echoes  of  the  dead  past  for  the 
divine  voice  of  truth;  prepare  yourselves  for  a  future  of  which  you  have 
hardly  dared  to  dream  unless  you  have  at  least  taken  the  first  few  steps 
on  the  way.  For  you  have  chosen  a  path,  although  rough  and  thorny  at 
the  start,  that  soon  widens  out  and  leads  you  to  the  divine  truth.  You 
are  free  to  doubt  while  you  are  still  at  the  beginning  of  the  way,  you  are 
free  to  decline  to  accept  on  hearsay  what  is  taught  respecting  the  source 
and  the  cause  of  Truth,  but  you  are  always  able  to  hear  what  its  voice  is 
telling  you,  and  you  can  always  study  the  effects  of  the  creative  force 
coming  from  the  depths  of  the  unknown.  The  arid  land  upon  which  the 
present  generation  of  men  is  moving  at  the  close  of  this  age  of  spiritual 
dearth  and  of  purely  material  satisfaction,  has  need  of  a  divine  symbol, 
of  a  rainbow  of  hope  to  rise  above  its  horizon.  For  of  all  the  past  centuries 
our  Nineteenth  has  been  the  most  criminal.  It  is  criminal  in  its  frightful 
selfishness,  in  its  skepticism  which  grimaces  at  the  very  idea  of  anything 
beyond  the  material;  in  its  idiotic  indifference  to  all  that  does  not  pertain 
to  personal  egotism  —  more  than  any  of  previous  centuries  of  ignorant 
barbarism  or  intellectual  darkness.  Our  century  must  be  saved  from  itself 
before  its  last  hour  strikes.  This  is  the  moment  for  all  those  to  act  who 
see  the  sterility  and  folly  of  an  existence  blinded  by  materialism  and 
ferociously  indifferent  to  the  fate  of  one's  neighbor;  now  is  the  time  for 
them  to  devote  all  their  energies,  all  their  courage  to  the  great  intellectual 
reform.    This  reform  can  only  be  accomplished  by  Theosophy  we  say,  by 


QUOTATIONS  FROM  "THE  NEW  CYCLE"  73 

the  Occultism  of  the  Wisdom  of  the  Orient.  The  paths  that  lead  to  it  are 
many;  but  the  Wisdom  is  one.  Artistic  souls  foresee  it,  those  who  suffer 
dream  of  it,  the  pure  in  heart  know  it.  Those  who  work  for  others  cannot 
remain  blinded  to  its  reality,  though  they  may  not  recognise  it  by  name. 
Only  light  and  empty  minds,  egotistical  and  vain  drones,  confused  by 
their  own  buzzing  will  remain  ignorant  of  the  supreme  ideal.  They  will 
continue  to  exist  until  life  becomes  a  grievous  burden  to  them. 

This  is  to  be  distinctly  remembered  however:  These  pages  are  not 
written  for  the  masses.  They  are  neither  an  appeal  for  reforms,  nor  an 
effort  to  ^vin  over  to  our  views  the  fortunate  in  life;  they  are  addressed 
solely  to  those  who  are  constitutionally  able  to  comprehend  them,  to 
those  who  suffer,  to  those  who  hunger  and  thirst  after  some  Reality  in 
this  world  of  Chinese  Shadows.  And  why  should  they  not  show  them- 
selves courageous  enough  to  leave  their  world  of  trifling  occupations, 
their  pleasures  above  all  and  their  personal  interests,  at  least  as  far  as 
those  interests  do  not  form  part  of  their  duty  to  their  families  or  others? 
No  one  is  so  busy  or  so  poor  that  he  cannot  create  a  noble  ideal  and  follow 
it.  Why  then  hesitate  in  breaking  a  path  towards  this  ideal,  through 
all  obstacles;  over  every  stumbling-block,  every  petty  hindrance  of  social 
life,  in  order  to  march  straight  forward  until  the  goal  is  reached? 

Those  who  would  make  this  effort  would  soon  find  that  the  "strait 
gate"  and  the  "thorny  path"  lead  to  the  broad  valleys  of  the  limitless 
horizons,  to  that  state  where  there  is  no  more  death,  because  they  have 
regained  their  divinity.  But  the  truth  is  that  the  first  conditions  necessary 
to  reach  it  are  a  disinterestedness,  an  absolute  impersonality,  a  boundless 
devotion  to  the  interests  of  others,  and  a  complete  indifference  to  the 
world  and  its  opinions.  The  motive  must  be  absolutely  pure  in  order  to 
make  the  first  steps  on  that  ideal  path;  —  not  an  unworthy  thought  must 
turn  the  eyes  from  the  end  in  view,  not  one  doubt  must  shackle  the  feet. 
There  do  exist  men  and  women  thoroughly  qualified  for  this  whose  only 
aim  is  to  dwell  under  the  aegis  of  their  divine  nature.  Let  them,  at  least, 
take  courage  to  live  the  life  and  not  conceal  it  from  the  eyes  of  others! 
The  opinion  of  no  other  person  should  be  taken  as  superior  to  the  voice 
of  conscience.  Let  that  conscience,  developed  to  its  highest  degree, 
guide  us  in  the  control  of  all  the  ordinary  acts  of  life.  As  to  the  conduct 
of  our  inner  life,  we  must  concentrate  the  entire  attention  on  the  ideal 
we  have  proposed  to  ourselves,  and  look  straight  ahead  without  paying 
the  slightest  attention  to  the  mud  upon  our  feet.  .  .  . 

Those  who  can  make  this  supreme  effort  are  the  true  Theosophists. 


QUOTATIONS    FROM     "THE    TIDAL    WAVE"* 

"The  tidal  wave  of  deeper  souls, 

Into  our  inmost  being  rolls, 

And  lifts  us  unawares, 

Out  of  all  meaner  cares." — Longfellow 

THE  great  psychic  and  spiritual  change  now  taking  place  in  the  realm 
of  the  human  Soul,  is  quite  remarkable.  ... 

Verily  the  Spirit  in  man,  so  long  hidden  out  of  pubHc  sight,  so  care- 
fully concealed  and  so  far  exiled  from  the  arena  of  modern  learning,  has  at 
last  awakened.  It  now  asserts  itself  and  is  loudly  re-demanding  its  un- 
recognised yet  ever  legitimate  rights.  It  refuses  to  be  any  longer  trampled 
under  the  brutal  foot  of  Materialism,  speculated  upon  by  the  Churches, 
and  made  a  fathomless  source  of  income  by  those  who  have  self-constituted 
themselves  its  universal  custodians.  .  .  .  The  Spirit  in  man  —  the  direct, 
though  now  but  broken  ray  and  emanation  of  the  Universal  Spirit  — 
has  at  last  awakened.  .  .  . 

Look  around  you  and  behold!  Think  of  what  you  see  and  hear, 
and  draw  therefrom  your  conclusions.  The  age  of  crass  materialism,  of 
Soul  insanity  and  blindness,  is  swiftly  passing  away.  A  death  struggle 
between  Mysticism  and  Materialism  is  no  longer  at  hand,  but  is  already 
raging.  And  the  party  which  will  win  the  day  at  this  supreme  hour  will 
become  the  master  of  the  situation  and  of  the  future;  ...  If  the  signs 
of  the  times  can  be  trusted  it  is  not  the  Animalists  who  will  remain 
conquerors.  This  is  warranted  us  by  the  many  brave  and  prolific  authors 
and  writers  who  have  arisen  of  late  to  defend  the  rights  of  Spirit  to  reign 
over  matter.  Many  are  the  honest,  aspiring  Souls  now  raising  themselves 
Hke  a  dead  wall  against  the  torrent  of  the  muddy  waters  of  MateriaHsm. 
And  facing  the  hitherto  domineering  flood  which  is  still  steadily  carrying 
off  into  unknown  abysses  the  fragments  from  the  wreck  of  the  dethroned, 
cast-down  Human  Spirit,  they  now  command:  "So  far  hast  thou  come; 
but  thou  shalt  go  no  further!" 

....  The  renovated,  Hfe-giving  Spirit  in  man  is  boldly  freeing  it- 
self from  the  dark  fetters  of  the  hitherto  all-capturing  animal  life  and 
matter.  Behold  it,  saith  the  poet,  as,  ascending  on  its  broad,  white 
wings,  it  soars  into  the  regions  of  real  life  and  light;  whence,  calm  and 
godlike,  it  contemplates  with  unfeigned  pity  those  golden  idols  of  the 
modern  material  cult  with  their  feet  of  clay,  which  have  hitherto  screened 
from  the  purblind  masses  their  true  and  living  gods.     .    .    . 

*  From  Editorial  in  Lucifer,  November,  1889. 


QUOTATIONS   FROM    "THE   TIDAL   WAVE"  75 

Literature  —  once  wrote  a  critic  —  is  the  confession  of  social  life,  re- 
flecting all  its  sins,  and  all  its  acts  of  baseness  as  of  heroism.  In  this 
sense  a  book  is  of  far  greater  importance  than  any  man.  Books  do  not 
represent  one  man,  but  they  are  the  mirror  of  a  host  of  men.  Hence 
the  great  English  poet-philosopher  said  of  books,  that  he  knew  that  they 
were  as  hard  to  kill  and  as  prolific  as  the  teeth  of  the  fabulous  dragon; 
sow  them  hither  and  thither  and  armed  warriors  will  grow  out  of  them. 
To  kill  a  good  book,  is  equal  to  killing  a  man. 

The  'poet-philosopher'  is  right. 

A  new  era  has  begun  in  literature,  this  is  certain.  New  thoughts 
and  new  interests  have  created  new  intellectual  needs;  hence  a  new  race 
of  authors  is  springing  up.  And  this  new  species  will  gradually  and  imper- 
ceptibly shut  out  the  old  one,  those  fogies  of  yore  who,  though  they  still 
reign  nominally,  are  allowed  to  do  so  rather  by  force  of  habit  than  predi- 
lection. It  is  not  he  who  repeats  obstinately  and  parrot-like  the  old 
literary  formulae  and  holds  desperately  to  publishers'  traditions,  who 
will  find  himself  answering  to  the  new  needs;  not  the  man  who  prefers 
his  narrow  party  discipline  to  the  search  for  the  long-exiled  Spirit  of 
man  and  the  now  lost  truths;  not  these,  but  verily  he  who,  parting 
company  with  his  beloved  'authority,'  lifts  boldly  and  carries  on  un- 
flinchingly the  standard  of  the  Future  Man.  It  is  finally  those  who, 
amidst  the  present  wholesale  dominion  of  the  worship  of  matter,  material 
interests  and  selfishness,  will  have  bravely  fought  for  human  rights  and 
man's  divine  nature,  who  will  become,  if  they  only  win,  the  teachers  of 
the  masses  in  the  coming  century,  and  so  their  benefactors. 

But  woe  to  the  XXth  century  if  the  now  reigning  school  of  thought 
prevails,  for  Spirit  would  once  more  be  made  captive  and  silenced  till 
the  end  of  the  now  coming  age.  It  is  not  the  fanatics  of  the  letter  in 
general,  nor  the  iconoclasts  and  Vandals  who  fight  the  new  Spirit  of 
thought,  nor  yet  the  modern  Roundheads,  supporters  of  the  old  Puritan 
religious  and  social  traditions,  who  will  ever  become  the  protectors  and 
Saviors  of  the  now  resurrecting  human  thought  and  Spirit.  It  is  not 
those  too-willing  supporters  of  the  old  cult,  and  the  mediaeval  heresies 
of  those  who  guard  like  a  relic  every  error  of  their  sect  or  party,  who 
jealously  watch  over  their  own  thought  lest  it  should,  growing  out  of 
its  teens,  assimilate  some  fresher  and  more  beneficent  idea  —  not  these 
who  are  the  wise  men  of  the  future.  It  is  not  for  them  that  the  hour 
of  the  new  historical  era  will  have  struck,  but  for  those  who  will  have 
learnt  to  express  and  put  into  practice  the  aspirations  as  well  as  the 
physical  needs  of  the  rising  generations.  ...  In  order  that  one  should 
fully  comprehend  individual  life  with  its  physiological,  psychic  and 
spiritual  mysteries,  he  has  to  devote  himself  with  all  the  fervor  of  un- 


76  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

selfish  philanthropy  and  love  for  his  brother  men,  to  studying  and  know- 
ing collective  life,  or  Mankind.  Without  preconceptions  or  prejudice,  as 
also  without  the  least  fear  of  possible  results  in  one  or  another  direction, 
he  has  to  decipher,  understand  and  remetnber  the  deep  and  innermost 
feelings  and  the  aspirations  of  the  poor  people's  great  and  suffering  heart. 
To  do  this  he  has  first  "to  attune  his  soul  with  that  of  Humanity,"  as 
the  old  philosophy  teaches;  to  thoroughly  master  the  correct  meaning 
of  every  line  and  word  in  the  rapidly  turning  pages  of  the  Book  of  Life 
of  MANKIND  and  to  be  thoroughly  saturated  with  the  truism  that  the 
latter  is  a  whole  inseparable  from  his  own  Self. 

How  many  of  such  profound  readers  of  life  may  be  found  in  our  boasted 
age  of  sciences  and  culture?  Of  course  we  do  not  mean  authors  alone, 
but  rather  the  practical  and  still  unrecognized,  though  well  known, 
philanthropists  and  altruists  of  our  age;  the  people's  friends,  the  unselfish 
lovers  of  man,  and  the  defenders  of  human  right  to  the  freedom  of  Spirit. 
Few  indeed  are  such;  for  they  are  the  rare  blossoms  of  the  age,  and  gener- 
ally the  martyrs  to  prejudiced  mobs  and  time-servers.  Like  those  wonder- 
ful 'Snow  flowers'  of  Northern  Siberia,  which,  in  order  to  shoot  forth 
from  the  cold  frozen  soil,  have  to  pierce  through  a  thick  layer  of  hard, 
icy  snow,  so  these  rare  characters  have  to  fight  their  battles  all  their 
life  with  cold  indifference  and  human  harshness,  .... 

.  .  .  The  root  of  evil  lies,  therefore,  in  a  moral,  not  in  a  physical 
cause. 

If  asked,  what  is  it  then  that  will  help,  we  answer  boldly: — Theo- 
sophical  Hterature.  .  .  . 

Yet,  even  in  the  absence  of  such  great  gifts  one  may  do  good  in  a 
smaller  and  humbler  way  by  taking  note  and  exposing  in  impersonal 
narratives  the  crying  vices  and  evils  of  the  day,  by  word  and  deed,  by 
publications  and  practical  example.  Let  the  force  of  that  example  im- 
press others  to  follow  it;  and  then  instead  of  deriding  our  doctrines  and 
aspirations  the  men  of  the  XXth,  if  not  the  XlXth  century,  will  see 
clearer,  and  judge  with  knowledge  and  according  to  facts  instead  of 
prejudging  agreeably  to  rooted  misconceptions.  Then  and  not  till  then 
will  the  world  find  itself  forced  to  acknowledge  that  it  was  wrong,  and 
that  Theosophy  alone  can  gradually  create  a  mankind  as  harmonious 
and  as  simple-souled  as  Kosmos  itself;  but  to  effect  this  Theosophists 
have  to  act  as  such.  Having  helped  to  awaken  the  spirit  in  many  a 
man  —  we  say  this  boldly  challenging  contradiction  —  shall  we  now  stop 
instead  of  swimming  with  the  Tidal  Wave? 


DONATED  BY 
KATHARINE  TINGLEY 


GEMS    FROM    "THE    VOICE    OF    THE    SILENCE" 

TRANSLATED    AND    ANNOTATED    FROM    THE    "BOOK    OF    THE    GOLDEN 

Precepts"   by   H.   P.    Blavatsky 

Before  the  Soul  can  see,  the  Harmony  within  must  be  attained,  and 
fleshly  eyes  be  rendered  blind  to  all  illusion. 

Give  up  thy  life,  if  thou  wouldst  live. 

The  Wise  Ones  tarry  not  in  pleasure-grounds  of  senses. 
The  Wise  Ones  heed  not  the  sweet- tongued  voices  of  illusion. 

Strive  with  thy  thoughts  unclean  before  they  overpower  thee.  Use 
them  as  they  will  thee,  for  if  thou  sparest  them  and  they  take  root  and 
grow,  know  well  these  thoughts  will  overpower  and  kill  thee.  Beware, 
Disciple,  suffer  not,  e'en  though  it  be  their  shadow,  to  approach.  For 
it  will  grow,  increase  in  size  and  power,  and  then  this  thing  of  darkness 
will  absorb  thy  being  before  thou  hast  well  realized  the  black  foul  mon- 
ster's presence. 

Let  thy  Soul  lend  its  ear  to  every  cry  of  pain  like  as  the  Lotus  bares 
its  heart  to  drink  the  morning  sun. 

Let  not  the  fierce  Sun  dry  one  tear  of  pain  before  thyself  hast  wiped  it 
from  the  sufferer's  eye.  But  let  each  burning  human  tear  drop  on  thy 
heart  and  there  remain,  nor  ever  brush  it  off,  until  the  pain  that  caused  it 
is  removed. 

Do  not  beUeve  that  lust  can  ever  be  killed  out  if  gratified  or  satiated, 
for  this  is  an  abomination.  It  is  by  feeding  vice  that  it  expands  and  waxes 
strong,  like  to  the  worm  that  fattens  on  the  blossom's  heart. 

For  mind  is  like  a  mirror;  it  gathers  dust  while  it  reflects.  It  needs 
the  gentle  breezes  of  Soul- wisdom  to  brush  away  the  dust  of  our  illusions. 
Seek,  O  beginner,  to  blend  thy  Mind  and  Soul. 

False  learning  is  rejected  by  the  Wise,  and  scattered  to  the  winds  by 
the  good  Law.  Its  wheel  revolves  for  all,  the  humble  and  the  proud. 
The  'Doctrine  of  the  Eye'  is  for  the  crowd;  the  'Doctrine  of  the  Heart' 
for  the  elect.  The  first  repeat  in  pride:  "Behold,  I  know";  the  last,  they 
who  in  humbleness  have  garnered,  low  confess:  "Thus  have  I  heard." 
'Great  Sifter'  is  the  name  of  the  'Heart  Doctrine.' 
The  wheel  of  the  good  Law  moves  swiftly  on.  It  grinds  by  night  and 
day.  The  worthless  husks  it  drives  from  out  the  golden  grain,  the  refuse 
from  the  flour.  The  hand  of  Karma  guides  the  wheel;  the  revolutions 
mark  the  beatings  of  the  Karmic  heart. 


78  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

True  knowledge  is  the  flour,  false  learning  is  the  husk. 

Sow  kindly  acts  and  thou  shalt  reap  their  fruition.  Inaction  in  a 
deed  of  mercy  becomes  an  action  in  a  deadly  sin. 

Have  patience,   as  one  who  fears  no  failure,  courts  no  success.  .  .  . 

Have  perseverance  as  one  who  doth  for  evermore  endure.  Thy 
shadows  live  and  vanish;  that  which  in  thee  shall  live  forever,  that  which 
in  thee  knows,  for  it  is  knowledge,  is  not  of  fleeting  life:  it  is  the  Man  that 
was,  that  is,  and  will  be,  for  whom  the  hour  shall  never  strike. 

Step  out  of  sunlight  into  shade,  to  make  more  room  for  others. 

To  live  to  benefit  mankind  is  the  first  step.  To  practise  the  six  glorious 
virtues  is  the  second. 

The  selfish  devotee  lives  to  no  purpose.  The  man  who  does  not  go 
through  his  appointed  work  in  life  —  has  hved  in  vain. 

Be  humble,  if  thou  wouldst  attain  to  Wisdom. 
Be  humbler  still,  when  Wisdom  thou  hast  mastered. 

The  way  to  final  freedom  is  within  thy  self. 
That  way  begins  and  ends  outside  of  Self. 

The  path  that  leadeth  on,  is  lighted  by  one  fire  —  the  light  of  daring, 
burning  in  the  heart. 


FROM    "IS    THEOSOPHY    A    RELIGION?"* 

WHAT,  then,  is  Theosophy,  and  how  may  it  be  defined  in  its  latest 
presentation  in  this  closing  portion  of  the  nineteenth  century? 
Theosophy,  we  say,  is  not  a  Religion. 
Yet  there  are,  as  every  one  knows,  certain  beUefs,  philosophical, 
religious  and  scientific,  which  have  become  so  closely  associated  in  recent 
years  with  the  word  "Theosophy"  that  they  have  come  to  be  taken  by 
the  general  public  for  Theosophy  itself.  Moreover,  we  shall  be  told  these 
beliefs  have  been  put  forward,  explained  and  defended  by  those  very 
Founders  who  have  declared  that  Theosophy  is  not  a  Religion.  What 
is  then  the  explanation  of  this  apparent  contradiction?  How  can  a  certain 
body  of  beliefs  and  teachings,  an  elaborate  doctrine,  in  fact,  be  labeled 
"Theosophy"  and  be  tacitly  accepted  as  " Theosophical "  by  nine- tenths 
of  the  members  of  the  Theosophical  Society,  if  Theosophy  is  not  a  Reli- 
gion? —  we  are  asked. 

*  Lucifer,  IH,  pp.  178-180. 


DONATED  BY  ..,  "'  '  '' "   "  '       '•'  • 

KATHERINE  TINGLE  Y  •..•/■'■.!..  j  :''0  j'.;  :\:  : 

MISCELLANEOUS    QUOTATIONS  79 

To  explain  this  is  the  purpose  of  the  present  protest. 

It  is  perhaps  necessary,  first  of  all,  to  say,  that  the  assertion  that 
"Theosophy  is  not  a  Religion,"  by  no  means  excludes  the  fact  that 
"Theosophy  is  Religion"  itself.  A  Religion  in  the  true  and  only  correct 
sense,  is  a  bond  uniting  men  together  —  not  a  particular  set  of  dogmas 
and  beliefs.  Now  Religion,  per  se,  in  its  widest  meaning  is  that  which 
binds  not  only  all  men,  but  also  all  beings  and  all  things  in  the  entire 
Universe  into  one  grand  whole.  This  is  our  Theosophical  definition 
of  religion.  .  .  . 

Thus  Theosophy  is  not  a  Religion,  we  say,  but  Religion  itself,  the 
one  bond  of  unity,  which  is  so  universal  and  all-embracing  that  no  man, 
as  no  speck  —  from  gods  and  mortals  down  to  animals,  the  blade  of  grass 
and  atom  —  can  be  outside  of  its  light.  Therefore,  any  organization  or 
body  of  that  name  must  necessarily  be  a  Universal  Brotherhood. 


MISCELLANEOUS    QUOTATIONS    FROM    THE 

WRITINGS   OF 
HELENA     PETROVNA     BLAVATSKY 

^^OEHOLD  the  Truth  before  you:  a  clean  life,  an  open  mind,  a  pure 
-^-^  heart,  an  eager  intellect,  an  unveiled  spiritual  perception,  a  broth- 
erliness  for  one's  co-disciple,  a  readiness  to  give  and  receive  advice  and 
instruction,  a  loyal  sense  of  duty  to  the  Teacher,  a  willing  obedience  to 
the  behests  of  Truth,  once  we  have  placed  our  confidence  in  and  believe 
that  Teacher  to  be  in  possession  of  it;  a  courageous  endurance  of  personal 
injustice,  a  brave  declaration  of  principles,  a  valiant  defense  of  those  who 
are  imjustly  attacked,  and  a  constant  eye  to  the  ideal  of  human  pro- 
gression and  perfection  which  the  Secret  Science  {Giipta-Vidya)  depicts  — 
these  are  the  golden  stairs  up  the  steps  of  which  the  learner  may  climb 
to  the  temple  of  Divine  Wisdom."* 

If  man  by  suppressing,  if  not  destroying,  his  selfishness  and  per- 
sonality, only  succeeds  in  knowing  himself  as  he  is  beyond  the  veil  of 
physical  Maya  [illusion]  he  will  soon  stand  beyond  all  pain,  all  misery, 
and  beyond  all  the  wear  and  tear  of  change,  which  is  the  chief  originator 
of  pain.  ...    All  this  may  be  achieved  by  the  development  of  unselfish 

*  From  an  ancient  writing  quoted  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky  for  the  instruction  of  her  students. 


80  HELENA  PETROVNA  BLAVATSKY 

universal  love  of  Humanity,  and  the  suppression  of  personality,  or  selfish- 
ness, which  is  the  cause  of  all  sin,  and  consequently  of  all  human  sorrow. 

To  merit  the  honorable  title  of  Theosophist,  one  must  be  an  altruist 
above  all,  one  ever  ready  to  help  equally  foe  or  friend,  to  act  rather  than 
to  speak,  and  to  urge  others  to  action  while  never  losing  an  opportunity 
to  work  himself. 

From  the  Theosophist  must  radiate  those  higher  spiritual  forces  which 
alone  can  regenerate  his  fellow-men. 

The  first  of  Theosophical  duties  is  to  do  one's  duty  by  all  men. 

Let  once  man's  immortal  spirit  take  possession  of  the  temple  of  his 
body,  and  his  own  divine  humanity  will  redeem  him. 

It  is  only  by  close  brotherly  union  of  men's  inner  selves  that  the 
reign  of  justice  and  equality  can  be  inaugurated. 

Nature  gives  up  her  innermost  secrets  and  imparts  true  wisdom  only 
to  him  who  seeks  truth  for  its  own  sake  and  who  craves  for  knowledge  in 
order  to  confer  benefits  on  others,  not  on  his  own  unimportant  personality. 

He  who  does  not  practise  altruism;  he  who  is  not  prepared  to  share 
his  last  morsel  with  a  weaker  or  poorer  than  himself;  he  who  neglects  to 
help  his  brother  man,  of  whatever  race,  nation  or  creed,  whenever  and 
wherever  he  meets  suffering,  and  who  turns  a  deaf  ear  to  the  cry  of  human 
misery  —  is  no  Theosophist. 

Theosophy  will  gradually  leaven  and  permeate  the  great  mass  of 
thinking  and  intelligent  people  with  its  large-minded  and  noble  ideas  of 
Religion,  Duty,  and  Philanthropy.  Slowly  but  surely  it  will  burst  asunder 
the  iron  fetters  of  creeds  and  dogmas,  of  social  and  caste  prejudices;  it 
will  break  down  racial  and  national  antipathies  and  barriers,  and  will 
open  the  way  to  the  practical  realization  of  the  Brotherhood  of  all  men. 

That  light  that  burns  in  thee,  dost  thou  feel  it  different  in  any  wise 
from  the  light  which  shines  in  other  men? 

The  duty  of  a  Theosophist:  to  fear  no  one  and  naught  save  the 
tribunal  of  his  own  conscience. 


QUOTATIONS  81 

The  universal  religion  can  only  be  one  if  we  accept  the  real  primitive 
meaning  of  the  root  of  that  word.  We  Theosophists  so  accept  it;  and 
therefore  say  we  are  all  brothers  —  by  the  laws  of  nature,  of  birth,  of 
death,  as  also  by  the  laws  of  our  utter  helplessness  from  birth  to  death 
in  this  world  of  sorrow  and  deceptive  illusions.  Let  us  then  love,  help 
and  mutually  defend  each  other  against  the  spirit  of  deception;  and 
while  holding  to  that  which  each  of  us  accepts  as  his  ideal  of  truth  and 
unity  —  i.  e.,  to  the  religion  which  suits  each  of  us  best  —  let  us  unite 
to  form  a  practical  nucleus  of  a  Universal  Brotherhood  of  Humanity 
without  distinction  of  race,  creed,  or  color. 

True  knowledge  is  of  Spirit  and  in  Spirit  alone,  and  cannot  be  acquired 
in  any  other  way  except  through  the  region  of  the  higher  mind.  ...  He 
who  carries  out  only  the  laws  established  by  human  minds,  who  lives 
that  life  which  is  prescribed  by  the  code  of  mortals  and  their  fallible 
legislation,  chooses  as  his  guiding  star  a  beacon  which  shines  on  the 
ocean  of  Maya,  or  of  temporary  delusions,  and  lasts  for  but  one  incarna- 
tion. These  laws  are  necessary  for  the  life  and  welfare  of  physical  man 
alone.  He  has  chosen  a  pilot  who  directs  him  through  the  shoals  of  one 
existence,  a  master  who  parts  with  him,  however,  on  the  threshold  of 
death.  How  much  happier  that  man  who,  while  strictly  performing  on 
the  temporary  objective  plane  the  duties  of  daily  life,  carrying  out  each 
and  every  law  of  his  country,  and  rendering,  in  short,  to  Caesar  what  is 
Caesar's,  leads  in  reality  a  spiritual  and  permanent  existence,  a  life  with 
no  breaks  of  continuity,  no  gaps,  no  interludes,  not  even  during  those 
periods  which  are  the  halting-places  of  the  long  pilgrimage  of  purely 
spiritual  life.  All  the  phenomena  of  the  lower  human  mind  disappear 
like  the  curtain  of  a  proscenium,  allowing  him  to  live  in  the  region  beyond 
it,  the  plane  of  the  noumenal,  the  one  reality.  If  man,  by  suppressing, 
if  not  destroying,  his  selfishness  and  personality,  only  succeeds  in  knowing 
himself  as  he  is  beyond  the  veil  of  physical  Maya,  he  will  soon  stand  beyond 
all  pain,  all  misery,  and  beyond  the  wear  and  tear  of  change,  which  is  the 
chief  originator  of  pain.  Such  a  man  will  be  physically  of  matter,  he  will 
move  surrounded  by  matter,  and  yet  he  will  live  beyond  and  outside  it. 
His  body  will  be  subject  to  change,  but  he  himself  will  be  entirely  without 
it,  and  will  experience  everlasting  life  even  while  in  temporary  bodies  of 
short  duration.  All  this  may  be  achieved  by  the  development  of  unselfish 
universal  love  of  Humanity,  and  the  suppression  of  personality,  or  selfish- 
ness, which  is  the  cause  of  all  sin,  and  consequently  of  all  human  sorrow. 


The  Universal  Brotherhood  and  Theosophical  Society 

Founded  in  New  York  City  in  1875  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky,  William  Q.  Judge,  and  others 
Reorganized  in  1898  by  Katherine  Tingley 
Central  Office,  Point  Loma,  California 

The  Headquarters  of  the  Society  at  Point  Loma,  with  the  buildings  and  grounds,  are  no  'Community,'  'Settlement' 
or  'Colony,'  but  are  the  Central  Executive  Office  of  an  international  organization  where  the  business  of  the  same 
is  carried  on,  and  where  the  teachings  of  Theosophy  are  being  demonstrated.  Midway  'twixt  East  and  West, 
where  the  rising  Sun  of  Progress  and  Enlightenment  shall  one  day  stand  at  full  meridian,  the  Headquarters  of  the 
Society  unite  the  philosophic  Orient  with  the  practical  West. 

MEMBERSHIP 

in  the  Universal  Brotherhood  and  Theosophical  Society  may  be  either  'at  large'  or  in  a  local  Branch.  Adhesion 
to  the  principle  of  Universal  Brotherhood  is  the  only  pre-requisite  to  membership.  The  Organization  represents 
no  particular  creed;  it  is  entirely  unsectarian.  and  includes  professors  of  all  faiths,  only  exacting  from  each  member 
that  large  toleration  of  the  beliefs  of  others  which  he  desires  them  to  exhibit  towards  his  own. 

Applications  for  membership  in  a  Branch  should  be  addressed  to  the  local  Director;  for  membership  'at  large,' 
to  the  Membership  Secretary,  International  Theosophical  Headquarters.  Point  Loma,  California. 


OBJECTS 

THIS  BROTHERHOOD  is  a  part 
of  a  great  and  universal  move- 
ment which  has  been  active  in  all 
ages. 

This  Organization  declares  that 
Brotherhood  is  a  fact  in  Nature.  Its 
principal  purpose  is  to  teach  Brother- 
hood, demonstrate  that  it  is  a  fact 
in  Nature,  and  make  it  a  living  power 
in  the  life  of  humanity. 

Its  subsidiary  purpose  is  to  study 
ancient  and  modern  religions,  science, 
philosophy  and  art;  to  investigate 
the  laws  of  Nature  and  the  divine 
powers  in  man. 

It  is  a  regrettable  fact  that  many 
people  use  the  name  of  Theosophy 
and  of  our  Organization  for  self- 
interest,  as  also  that  of  H.  P.  Bla- 
vatsky, the  Foundress,  and  even  the 
Society's  motto,  to  attract  attention 
to  themselves  and  to  gain  public 
support.  This  they  do  in  private  and 
public  speech  and  in  publications. 
Without  being  in  any  way  connected 
with  the  Universal  Brotherhood  and 
Theosophical  Society,  in  many  cases 
they  permit  it  to  be  inferred  that 
they  are,  thus  misleading  the  public, 


and  honest  inquirers  are  hence  led 
away  from  the  original  truths  of 
Theosophy. 

The  Universal  Brotherhood  and 
Theosophical  Society  welcomes  to 
membership  all  who  truly  love  their 
fellowmen  and  desire  the  eradication 
of  the  evils  caused  by  the  barriers 
of  race,  creed,  caste,  or  color,  which 
have  so  long  impeded  human  pro- 
gress. To  all  sincere  lovers  of  truth, 
and  to  all  who  aspire  to  higher  and 
better  things  than  the  mere  pleasures 
and  interests  of  a  worldly  life  and 
are  prepared  to  do  all  in  their  power 
to  make  Brotherhood  a  living  energy 
in  the  life  of  humanity,  its  various 
departments  offer  unlimited  oppor- 
tunities. 

The  whole  work  of  the  Organiza- 
tion is  under  the  direction  of  the 
Leader  and  Official  Head,  Katherine 
Tingley,  as  outlined  in  the  Constitu- 
tion. 

Inquirers  desiring  further  infor- 
mation about  Theosophy  or  the  Theo- 
sophical Society  are  invited  to  write 
to 

The  Secretary 

International  Theosophical  Headquarter* 
Point  Loma.  California 


STANDARD     THEOSOPHICAL    LITERATURE 

The  Secrp:t  Doctrine:  The  Sytithesis  of  Science,  Religion,  and  Philosophy:  by 
H.  P.  Blavatsky.  Second  Point  Loma  Edition,  1917:  Virtually  a  verbatim  re- 
print of  the  original  edition  published  in  1888  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky  (per  set:  4  vols.) 

Isis  Unveiled:  A  Master-Key  to  the  Mysteries  of  Ancient  and  Modern  Science  and 
Theology,  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky  (Per  set:  4  vols.) 

The  Key  to  Theosophy:  A  Clear  Exposition,  in  the  Form  of  Question  and  Answer, 
of  the  Ethics,  Science,  and  Philosophy,  for  the  Study  of  which  The  Universal  Brother- 
hood and  Theosophical  Society  has  been  founded,  with  a  copious  Glossary  of  General 
Theosophical  Terms,  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky  (per  copy) 

Bhagavad-GIta:  The  Book  of  Devotion.  A  Dialog  between  Krishna,  Lord  of  Devotion 
and  Arjuna,  Prince  of  India.   An  Episode  from  the  Mahdbharata,  India's  Great  Epic 

The  Voice  of  the  Silence,  and  other  fragments  from  the  Book  of  the  Golden  Precepts. 
Dedicated  to  the  Few.     Translated  and  Annotated  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky 

Echoes  from  the  Orient:  A  Broad  Outline  of  Theosophical  Doctrines,  doth 

by  W.  Q.  Judge  paper 


$12.00 


12.00 


2.25 


1.00 


.75 

.50 
.25 


A  Nosegay  of  Everlastings:  from  Katherine  Tingley's  Garden  of  Helpful  Thoughts. 

Short  extracts  culled  from  various  addresses  delivered  in  Europe  and  America.  cloth     .  75 

paper     .  50 

THEOSOPHICAL    PAMPHLETS:  per  copy,  each,     .15c. 


An  Epitome  of  Theosophy,  by  William  Quan  Judge 

The  Mystical  Christ,  by  Katherine  Tingley 

Katherine  Tingley  and  her  Raja- Yoga  System  of  Education,  by  Lilian  Whiting 

Katherine  Tingley:  Theosophist  and  Humanitarian,  by  Lilian  Whiting 

So.ME  of  the  Errors  of  Christian  Science,  by  H.  P.  Blavatsky  and  William  Q.  Judge 

The  Evils  of  Hypnotis.m,  by  Lydia  Ross,  m.  d. 

Katherine  Tingley  on  Marriage  and  the  Home,  by  Claire  Merton 
Incidents  in  the  History  of  the  Theosophical  Movement,  by  J.  H.  Fussell 


.25 
.25 


THEOSOPHICAL     MANUALS 

Handbooks  for  Students 
Price  each,  paper  .25;  cloth  .35.    Per  set  (19  vols.),  paper  $4.00;  cloth  $5.50 


No. 

1. 

No. 

2. 

No. 

3. 

No. 

4. 

No. 

5. 

No. 

6. 

No. 

7. 

No. 

8. 

No. 

9. 

No. 

10. 

No. 

11. 

Elementary  Theosophy 
The  Seven  Principles  of  Man 
Karma 

Reincarnation 
Man  after  Death 
Kama-loka  and  Devachan 
Teachers  and  Their  Disciples 
The  Doctrine  of  Cycles 
Psychism,  Ghostology,  and 

the  Astral  Plane 
The  Astral  Light 
Psychometry,  Clairvoyance,  and 

Thought-  Transference 


No.  12. 

No.  13. 
No.  14. 
No.  15. 

No.  16. 

No.  17. 

No.  18. 


The  Angel  and  the  Demon 

(2  vols.,  35c.  each) 
The  Flame  and  the  Clay 
On  God  and  Prayer 
Theosophy:    the  Mother  of 

Religions 
From  Crypt  to  Pronaos:  An  Essay 

on  the  Rise  and  Fall  of  Dogma 
Earth:    Its  Parentage,  its  Rounds 

and  its  Races 
Sons  of  the  Fire-Mist:    A  Study 

of  Man 


THE  PATH  SERIES 

Specially  adapted  for  Inquirers  in  Theosophy:  Per  copy     .05 

No.     1.     The  Purpose  of  the  Universal  Brotherhood  and  Theosophical  Society 

No.     2.     Theosophy  Generally  Stated  (W.  Q.  Judge) 

Reprinted  from  Official  Report,  World's  Parliament  of  Religions,  Chicago,  1893 

No.  3.  Mislaid  Mysteries  (Herbert  Coryn,  m.  d.) 

No.  4.  Theosophy  and  its  Counterfeits 

No.  5.  Some  Perverted  Presentations  of  Theosophy   (H.  T.  Edge,  M.  A.) 

No.  6.  What  is  Theosophy?  (H.  T.   Edge,   M.  A.) 

THE  THEOSOPHICAL  PATH  {illustrated,  monthly)  Edited  by  Katherine  Tingley 
per  copy,  domestic  .30,   foreign  .35  or  Is  6d. 
(per  year  $3.00:    Canadian  postage,   .35;   Foreign  .50) 


PAPERS  OF  THE   SCHOOL    OF   ANTIQUITY.     Per  copy,  20  cents 

No.     1.    The  Spirit  of  the  Hour  in  Archaeology:  by  William  E.  Gates,  Professor  of  American 
Archaeology  and  Linguistics,  School  of  Antiquity. 

No.    2.    The  Relation  of  Religion  to  Art  in  Antiquity  and  the  Middle  Ages:  by  Osvald  Siren, 
Professor  of  the  History  of  Art,  University  of  Stockholm. 

No.    3.     Notes  on  Peruvian  Antiquities  {illustrated) :  by  Fred.  J.  Dick,  M.  Inst.  C.  E.,  Professor 
of  Astronomy  and  Mathematics,  School  of  Antiquity. 

No.    5.     Early  Chinese  Painting  (illustrated):   by  William  E.  Gates 

No.     6.     Medical  Psychology:    by  Lydia  Ross,  M.  D. 

No.    7.    Ancient  Astronomy  in  Egypt  and  its  Significance  {illustrated) :   by  Fred.  J.  Dick. 

No.    8.    Studies  in  Evolution:   by  H.  T.  Edge,  M.  A.    Natural  Sciences  Tripos,  Cambridge 
University,  England;  Professor  of  Education  in  the  School  of  Antiquity. 

No.    9.    The  School  of  Antiquity:    Its  Meaning,  Purpose,  and  Scope:    by  J.  H.  Fussell, 
Secretary,   Universal  Brotherhood  and  Theosophical  Society. 

No.  10.     Problems  in  Ethnology:  by  J.  0.  Kinnaman,  A.  M.,  Ph.  D.,  Member  of  The  Victoria 
Institute  of  Great  Britain.     Notes  by  J.  H.  Fussell. 

No.  11.    Neglected  Fundamentals  in  Geometry:    by  Fred.  J.  Dick. 

No.  12,    Maya  Chronology  (illustrated):    by  Fred.  J.  Dick. 


LITERATURE  IN  SWEDISH,  DUTCH,  GERMAN,  FRENCH,  SPANISH 
TRANSPORTATION    CHARGES    PREPAID 

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